People love compounding. “My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest,” runs one of Warren Buffett’s most famous quotes — and he has a lot of famous quotes. The basics are basic: if you have a pot of money and it grows by 5 per cent two years in a row, its absolute growth was greater in the second year because it grew from a higher level. Conversely, if a stock market crashes 10 per cent, then 11 per cent, then 12 per cent on consecutive days, the amount of value lost is getting lower each day.

Both of these feel nice, but it’s also true that percentage growth is less valuable following a loss, and a percentage loss hurts more following a gain. The key dynamic is reinvestment: subsequent change occurs to a changed entity. What compounding is not is just a fancy word for growth. If you sell $10 of lemonade one week, and then $12 worth, and then $14 worth, the $14 has not compoundedly grown from the $10, because they’re discrete amounts.

Anyway, company bosses and analysts have been saying “compounding” an awful lot lately (h/t to Lex jefe John Foley for drawing our attention to this): Sysco’s Kevin Hourican, Versigent’s Erin Vanyess, Spotify’s Alex Norström, Wix’s Lior Shemesh, Wayfair’s Kate Gulliver, Coca‑Cola Europacific Partners’ Damian Gammell, Whirpool’s Marc Bitzer, Palantir’s Ryan Taylor, American Bitcoin’s Michael Ho, Nat West’s Katie Murray, Go Daddy’s Mark Mc Caffrey, and Reddit’s Drew Vollero all used the term in recent statements.

We’ve said it before: we don’t want to be the language police. So we’ll leave readers to decide which of these usages are appropriate and which should have people reaching for the bucket.