WORD of the day

nominal\NOM-in-ahl\; adjective

: (engineering) Functioning as intended

Example Sentences: It took over an hour on the phone to troubleshoot the system, but by the end of the call the customer’s network was nominal.

At launch time in 1986, all was not nominal for the space shuttle Challenger; extreme cold weather from the night before had done damage to one of its vital parts.

There are in fact many different ways to use this word, but for call center agents, the definition given above is by far the most appropriate. And incidentally, for those of you who remember the Challenger disaster, it could have easily been avoided. Several engineers warned NASA managers about the potentially catastrophic results of launching the craft on a cold morning. These warnings went unheeded. Today, the culture at NASA is somewhat different. A launch for one of their shuttles is absolutely out of the question unless all systems are operating nominally.