the.com/greatness

Talent is a rumor until obsession shows up and signs the lease.

means The quality of being exceptionally and lastingly good or great at something, beyond ordinary skill or success.

from From Old English 'great' (grēat), meaning thick, massive, or coarse in size — a word for sheer bulk long before it meant excellence. Over centuries the sense of physical largeness stretched into metaphor: great in size became great in degree, rank, or importance. 'Greatness' followed the same path, drifting from 'bigness' to 'moral or achieved magnitude' — the word's whole history is essentially size doing double duty as stature.

not talent
talent is cheap, repetition under pressure is not
survivorship bias
we study winners, ignore the identical losers
requires witnesses
unseen greatness just reads as eccentricity
expiration date
it ages into cautionary tale if you overstay
the.com · every word