Pragmatism is all the rage. It could be the word of 2026 if we make it to December. Mark Carney didn’t invent it in his myth-busting Davos speech but if Carlsberg did words, that’s how it would do it. A David circling the Philistine Goliath before a roomful of billionaires and elites, promoting a “realism” that is both “principled” and “pragmatic”. And getting a rare standing ovation for it.

News headlines confirm the word’s world domination ever since. Japan: an island of pragmatism in a sea of drama. Brussels, edging towards pragmatism over nuclear energy. Tusk in Kyiv: security, energy, economy and a new pragmatism. It has infiltrated every area from “judicial pragmatism” (the president of the European Court of Human Rights) to Steve Borthwick’s Rugby World Cup strategy (“A lesson in pragmatism and plagiarism”) and – surely the clincher – a candidate’s manifesto for the Trinity College students’ union presidency (“From Protest to Pragmatism: Jacob Barron’s Vision for the SU”).

It makes sense in a shattering world. Pragmatism implies reasonableness, openness, flexibility, compromise. There are no absolutes, no final answers. Nothing can be detached from its context. Focus on outcomes rather than process, on real-world consequences over theory.

Although Stripe’s John Collison didn’t use the word in his viral Irish Times essay, he was hailed for........

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