ergogenic

No matter your profession - be it office worker, athlete, physicist, or poet - "ergon," the Greek word for "work," has generated a word for you to work into your vocabulary. There is "ergonomics," which concerns efficiently and safely designing things that people use - for example, office equipment. Then there is our featured word, "ergogenic," which might crop up in a discussion about improving athletic performance. The physicist's mind is likely to think in "ergs," or centimeter-gram-second units of work. And for those of the literary, or even agricultural, bent, there is "georgic," which combines "ergon" with Greek geō-, meaning "earth," and refers to a poem dealing with agriculture or to the activity of agriculture itself. The most common derivative, however, is "energy," which adds Greek en, meaning "in," to "ergon."