WHEN CALIFORNIA Sen. Kamala Harris kicked off her campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination with. a rally in Oakland last month, she told the crowd, “We are at an inflection point in the history of our nation.” In a tweet before the current president’s recent State of the Union address, she invoked the same idea but, called it an “inflection moment”.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie sees things a bit differently. On MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes” last week, he rejected the idea that the Trump administration is about to collapse: “They say this is the inflection point. This is when the whole thing falls apart. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count how many times that’s been said.”
Whether we are at an “inflection point” or “inflection moment” or neither, the buzz word “inflection” is clearly having a moment.
In politics and business, an “inflection point” has come to signify a time of dramatic change. The catch phrase is typically delivered with a portentous air that makes it sound far more important than a mere “turning point.”
”Inflection point” comes out of mathematics, originally used for the point on a curve where it changes direction. ”Inflection” (or “inflexion” as it has some-times been spelled) comes from the Latin verb “inflectere,” meaning. “bend in” or “curve.” The bendy meaning of the “flect-ere” root ( shows up ‘in other words such as “reflect” (literally “bend back”), “deflect” (bend away) and ”.flexible” (capable of bending); In grammar, “inflection” came to refer to a kind of bending in the shape of a word-that is, when a base word is given an ending to indicate a. change in function, such as “-s” marking a plural noun .or “-ed” marking past tense verb.
As early as 1721, the lexicographer Nathan Bailey defined the “inflection point of a curve” in his “Universal. Etymological English Dictionary” as “the point where a curve begins to bend back again a contrary way;’ The expression remained in the geo-metric realm for ·a few centuries before it made the metaphorical leap into other spheres of life.
Economic types began using “inflection point” in the 1970s and ’80s to talk about times of rapid transformation, no doubt influenced by the curves on financial graphs and charts. In 1980, the economist Walter Heller predicted that the country would pull out of a recession since the economy was at an “inflection point.”.
From there, “inflection point” got taken up in the business world to label. moments of significant change for a company or industry. The term especially gained currency in the technology sector; Intel CEO Andrew Grove was credited with popularizing it in Silicon Valley. “ Inflection point” joined other mathematical terms that have turned into business metaphors, such as “parameter,” “exponential growth” and “calculus.”
Politicians eventually gravitated toward this momentous phrasing as well. ”Inflection points” flourished as rhetorical touchstones in the Obama administration, particularly in speeches by then-Vice President Joe Biden. At an entrepreneurship summit in Istanbul. in 2011, Mr. Biden declared that “we are at an inflection point in world history,” adding that the expression was something his “physics professor used to say.”
“An inflection point is when you sit behind the wheel of an automobile that is going 60 miles an hour, and abruptly you turn it five degrees in one direction,” Mr. Biden explained. ”It means you will never be back on the path you once were. It is impossible to return to that path.”
Nowadays, when Ms. Harris or other political figures call out an “inflection point” or “inflection moment,” such an elaborate elucidation is no longer required. The historical pathway of the word “inflection” has been irrevocably bent.