The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary
The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™
Index — Click the ᐅ to expand:
Tell me more
Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

A coinage of fabulously argumentative writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, to be antifragile is to be neither fragile — breakable, delicate, post-millennial, snowflakey and susceptible to damage by agitation, nor robust (stout, sturdy and impervious to agitation) but strengthened by agitation. Immune systems, callouses, Nietzscheans — these are antifragile. We wonder whether the word Taleb claims not to exist is “resilience” — perhaps that just means “ability to recover from shocks” rather than “ability to benefit from them”, but it is close.

See also