Well, after the last rant I thought I would check up the useage of the term leverage. In that rant I mentioned how .net had used the phrase “We’ll leverage Rails to generate our application directory…” in a tutorial.

I had a moment of doubt about the term – maybe it had been used properly. Off to the internet I did go. The wonders of Dictionary.com came to my assistance and defined the word as:

1. 1. The action of a lever.
   2. The mechanical advantage of a lever.
2. Positional advantage; power to act effectively: “started his… career with far more social leverage than his father had enjoyed” (Doris Kearns Goodwin).
3. The use of credit or borrowed funds to improve one’s speculative capacity and increase the rate of return from an investment, as in buying securities on margin.

Now, correct me if I am wrong but none of them are appropriate for the word being utilised as it was. Is there a reason why the sentence couldnt have read “We’ll use Rails to generate our application directory…” or is that not Web 2.0 enough for .net magazine?