Lexicon
This site has a vocabulary. A reader who has read three essays can finish the fourth's sentences, and this page is where the sentences come from.
Until now the list was kept private, on the theory that a watchword you have to look up is not one. The theory still holds inside the essays: no essay stops to define its own war cry, and none ever will. But the words have been placed now, one or two at a time, and a reader arriving mid-argument deserves the key. So here it is, in the order the vocabulary is built: the cries first, then the machinery that explains them, then the seasoning, then the old words the essays have started to carry.
Every entry names the essay that placed it. Where none has yet, it says so. Nothing here is a slogan looking for a movement; a term earns its place by being said in an essay first.
The war cries
Short, transitive, sayable. Each one carries the argument in three words or fewer, and each one lands at the end of a paragraph, never in the middle of a clause.
defect
I defect. Said once, in the first person, with a full stop. The refusal to keep playing a rigged game by its own rules. Not protest and not exit: a change of side, from labour to capital. A decision, not a process, which is why it is never defecting.
In become capital.
become capital
The site's shortest complete argument. If the capital side of the ledger captures the gains, move to that side of the ledger. An instruction, not a description, so it is never conjugated and never needs a you must in front of it.
In become capital.
escape velocity
The threshold where the income from the capital you own exceeds what you spend. Past it, paid work is optional and time is the thing bought back. Borrowed from orbital mechanics and meant literally: it is arithmetic, not a feeling. You reach it, or you cross into it. Nobody hits it.
In Escape Velocity · the essay.
past the line
The same threshold, said the short way. The line is personal expenditure equals personal capital income. Past it, capital pays for your living and your hours are your own. An essay says escape velocity or past the line, never both.
Not yet in an essay.
escaped
One word, standing alone as a sentence. The state after the line. An identity rather than an achievement, which is why nobody on this site says I escaped. The rarest word in the vocabulary, and its force is entirely a function of that.
Not yet in an essay.
journeyman
Paid by the day, from the Old French journée, a day's work. Qualified, skilled, trusted with the tools, and unable to own the workshop because the guild had closed its rolls. He sold days for the whole of his life and the days did not come back. It names most readers of this site: competent, well paid, selling days. Its pair is escaped. Journeyman is who you are; escaped is who you become.
Not yet in an essay. See the guilds, in losers keep losing.
The machinery
The structural furniture. These do the explaining, and they come in threes because the site's whole story has three parts: the condition you are in, the decision, and the state that keeps itself going without you.
gravity · ignition · orbit
The three stages every essay is filed under. Gravity is the condition nearly everyone is in: earning, spending, holding altitude on thrust that stops the moment the engine does. Ignition is the ascent, what people try once they have seen the problem. Orbit is life past the line, described from inside rather than forecast from outside.
seed · root · bloom
The same three stages in the growth register, for sentences about patience and what compounds unseen. Never a tag and never a URL. Root is the strongest of the three, because the years that look like nothing are the ones worth defending.
In escape velocity.
owed · paid · owned
The arc as a ledger, with no metaphor in it at all. You owe: rent, interest, hours, all of it flowing upward. You pay: the deliberate years of converting wage into stake. You own: and the flow reverses.
Not yet in an essay.
wage · stake · yield
The money relation without ornament. A wage is hours sold. A stake is a wage that was not spent. A yield is what the stake pays you for owning it, and the hours come back. The one triad that can sit next to a number without embarrassment.
In the calculator.
ebb · turn · flood
The tide. Ebb is everything running out, upward: rent, interest, hours. The turn is the slack moment when it stops going one way. Flood is the incoming tide, which rises with nobody rowing. The other vocabularies name three states; this one names the hinge between them. It is also the mark at the top of every page: a falling curve, an ochre node, a rising curve.
Not yet in an essay.
lock · key · door
Locked out is the condition, the key is the decision, and the open door is optionality; nobody has to stand there holding it. Not a coinage but an excavation: become capital said it first. Investing is the key. Capital the lock. The opening door is freedom of your time.
In become capital.
− 0 +
The sign of capital income minus expenditure. Below the line, at it, past it. The calculator's own vocabulary and nowhere else; it never appears in an essay. The turn is zero.
In the calculator.
40,270 km/h
Earth's escape velocity, 11.186 km/s. Kept exact rather than rounded to forty thousand, because the arithmetic behind the metaphor is what stops the metaphor being decoration.
In escape velocity.
the chasm
The line, where an essay wants distance rather than a boundary. Once the chasm is crossed capital grows bigger and faster. The permitted variant; there is no third metaphor for it.
In become capital.
compounding
A plain word, used as often as needed and never dressed up. The ongoing process. Not compound interest, which belongs to banks, and not the eighth wonder of the world, which belongs to LinkedIn.
the haves and the have-nots
Older than this site by a few centuries, and they land without explanation. Used sparingly: twice in one essay turns polemic into pantomime.
In become capital.
The seasoning
Jokes, jibes and asides. Character rather than doctrine. Once is funny; twice is a tic.
buy back Monday
The first thing capital income purchases is the worst day of the week. The smallest, most concrete picture of the whole project: one day at a time, bought with somebody else's labour, namely your capital's. Nobody buys back Tuesday; once the days start stacking it becomes a countdown, and countdowns are for people who have not started.
the tireless household member
Capital described as a worker who never sleeps, never strikes and never falls ill. 24/7/365. An image, not a slogan, so the phrasing is allowed to vary.
In become capital.
time to print T-shirts
The closing line of the first essay. Self-aware, and it earned the merch before there was any. Used once more at most, ever: a second outing makes it a catchphrase and a third makes it the point.
In become capital.
The old words
Since September 2026 every essay carries one old English word and one German word where they fit the meaning exactly, and never where they do not. The subject of this site is old, and the older word is usually the more precise one. They collect here as the essays land.
None yet. The first arrives with the next essay.
How the words are used
Two per essay at most, and usually one. Never two war cries in one sentence. A war cry lands at a full stop, never mid-clause. The first mention links, the later ones do not. One register per essay: the rocket or the seedling, escape velocity or past the line, never both. And never forced: an essay with no natural home for a term carries none. There will be many more essays; the vocabulary has time.