Hello, welcome to the vocabulary lesson for "Small is Beautiful." Let's talk about our first word. Our first word is cultivate, to cultivate.

Small Is Beautiful Vocabulary Text

Hello, welcome to the vocabulary lesson for "Small is Beautiful."

Let's talk about our first word. Our first word is cultivate, to cultivate. Of course,

cultivate means to grow or to encourage something. So it's to cultivate, it means to

grow or to encourage something.

to

Our next word is envy, envy. He says our cultures are cultivating envy, they're

encouraging envy. Envy really means jealousy. Jealousy, it means someone else has

something good and you don't like it, right? You are jealous. You're jealous of them. If

they have something better than you, you don't feel good about them. You don't feel

happy because they are happy. Instead you feel mad or angry or jealous. You feel bad

because you think "Ah, I want that. I want that. I want that," right? So envy really

means jealousy.

Our next word is frenzy, a frenzy. A frenzy is uncontrolled action. It really means just

constantly doing a lot of things without control. So, for example, sharks in the ocean,

you throw a dead fish in the water they will..rawr...they will start attacking the fish and

they all go crazy. So that's this idea of, that they just start attacking and moving and

doing all of these things without control. So frenzy really means kind of go crazy, just...

aaaahhhh...just start doing a lot of things, going crazy about it...lots and lots of actions

with no control.

if

Our next word is consumerism, consumerism. Consumerism means the philosophy or

the idea that buying stuff is most important in your life. It's the most important thing. So

that you get meaning from buying things, that buying stuff, buying cars, buying

expensive houses, buying more, more, more, more, that's what is most important in life.

That idea is called consumerism. Consumerism, so Schumacher is saying that right

now most of our cultures are consumerist cultures...that we are focused on

consumerism in most countries.

Our next word is abate, to abate. He says that consumerism in most of our countries

does not abate as we get richer. So to abate means to slow down or to stop, or to abate

can also mean to lessen. To get smaller, to get weaker, it has this idea of slowing down,

stopping. So he's thinking if someone gets rich then their greed, their desire for money,

should go down. It should become lower. It should abate. But he's saying it does not

abate. It does not slow down. It does not get less. So again, to abate, to get less, to

lessen, to slow down.

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