The fewer the words we can sum something sum in, the better we understand its essence. The ultimate in the one-word summary!  Guillio explains this concept to Elizabeth Gilbert in Gilbert’s memoir Eat Pray Love.

[Giulio] “Every city has a word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there” …

‘ What’s Rome’s word?” I asked.

“SEX,” he announced …

“Even over at the Vatican?”

“That’s different. The Vatican isn’t part of Rome. They have a different word over there. Their word is POWER.”

“You’d think it would be FAITH.”

“It’s POWER,” he repeated. “Trust me. But the word in Rome —  it’s SEX.”

…

Giulio asked, “What’s the word in New York City?”

I thought about this for a moment, then decided. “It’s a verb, of course. I think it’s ACHIEVE.”

(Which is subtly but significantly different from the word in Los Angeles, I believe, which is also a verb: SUCCEED. Later, I will share this whole theory with my Swedish friend Sofie, and she will offer her opinion that the word on the streets of Stockholm is CONFORM, which depresses both of us.)

I asked Giulio, “What’s  the word in Naples?” He knows the south of Italy as well.

“FIGHT,” he decides. “What was the word in your family when you were growing up?”

That one was difficult.  I was trying to think of a single word that somehow combines both FRUGAL and IRREVERENT. But Giulio was already on to the next and most obvious question: “What’s your word?”

Now that, I definitely could not answer. (From Eat Pray Love, p 108-9)

…but a hundred pages later in the book …

I was reading through an old text about Yoga, when I found a description of ancient spiritual seekers.  A Sanskrit word appeared in the paragraph: ANTEVASIN. It means “one who lives at the border.”

… It indicated a person who had left the bustling center of worldly life to go live at the edge of the forest where the spiritual masters dwelled. The antevasin was not one of the villagers anymore — not a householder with a conventional life.  But neither was he yet a transcendent — not one of those  sages who live deep in the unexplored worlds, fully realized.  The antevasin was an in-betweener. He was a border-dweller. He lived in sight of both worlds, but he looked toward the unknown. And he was a scholar.

When I read this description of the antevasin, I got so excited I gave a little bark of recognition. That’s my word, baby! In the modern age, of course, that image of an unexplored forest would have to be figurative, and the border would have to be figurative, too. But you can still live there.  You can still live on that shimmering line between your old thinking and your new understanding, always in a state of learning.  In the figurative sense, this is a border that is always moving — as you  advance forward  in your studies and realizations, that mysterious forest of the unknown always stays a few feet ahead of you, so you have to travel light in order to keep following it. (from Eat Pray Love, p 214)