We have a very small Shakespeare channel on our Slack group at work. Yes, I started it 🙂
This morning I posted, “Happy Shakespeare Day!”
Almost immediately a co-worker responded, “Flourish!”
And I thought, “You know, she probably means the stage direction, like ‘enter with a flourish'” or fanfare.
But then I thought, “Flourish also means thrive, too. That sounds like a wish to me, like ‘May you and your family prosper and be well on this illustrious day!'” And yes I said, “be well and prosper” in deliberate homage to the Vulcan “live long and prosper” because that crossed my mind at the time.
I wrote to her and she laughed, confirming that the stage direction was what she had in mind.
“Too late!” I replied. “New tradition born!” The double meaning makes it perfect for the occasion.
So if you catch me on Twitter today telling people to flourish, you can say you were there when the whole thing began.
UPDATE – Wow, I posted that whole original spelling it “fluorish” instead of “flourish”. I’m annoyed with myself, my spell checker, and my coworker (who spelled it that way originally), all in that order.