I was creating a document for my job, and I was wondering which word I should use.
After creating vision and develop the strategies, which expression should I use, "seek the vision and the strategies", or "pursue the vision and the strategies"?
So, I searched the Internet for "difference between pursue and seek."
Hmm... It's hard to choose...
From several explanations on the Internet, I ended up using "pursue", because I felt that "pursue" contains something like nuance of "achieve", I'm not sure though.
Subtle differences of nuance in other languages are really difficult to grasp.
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2 comments:
The subtle differences of nuance in one's own language are really difficult to appreciate too, aren't they?
In my opinion, you made the right choice.
The difference I would see between those two words, in that particular phrase, is this:
pursue = chase after something you already know or can see
seek = try to find something that is unknown or hidden
So, what about your "vision and strategy"? If the vision is already in your mind and the strategy is planned, then you are going to pursue them. If you are trying to discover a vision and decide on a strategy, then you are going to seek them.
I will mention an interesting Google service called Ngrams. It can be helpful with this kind of question, but, for many reasons, you should use it with great caution, and also use other sources of help. The Google Ngram Viewer shows the frequency of words and phrases found in books over the period 1800 to 2000. You can compare the frequency of two or more sets of words.
It is fascinating to see how words change in popularity over the years and to guess the reason for some sudden changes. Sometimes it is because of world events, sometimes the publication of a popular book or the release of a film. The results do not show the context of the words, so you must not rely too much on them for the type of question you have been thinking about here.
Here is the link for the comparison I did. By the way, my comment at the beginning was not based on these results, though they do show "pursue the vision" as the "winner".
Google Ngram Viewer
Thank you for the explanation of the difference. It was good to choose "pursue"!
Also, thank you for the information about Ngram. Very interesting!!
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