Power and influence

Power and influence are two different things, and Spanish keeps them apart. La potestad is the formal right to decide something; el ascendiente is the weight a person's word carries with nothing written down to explain why. This list gathers both sides — the offices and competences on one, the quiet routes on the other — and the words for what goes wrong in between. Near the end sits one that English cannot say in a word. El ninguneo is built out of ninguno, nobody: it is the practice of treating a person as though they were not there — not answering, not consulting, not looking up when they speak, leaving a name off a list. English has to describe it: « being sidelined », « frozen out », « passed over », « treated as a nobody ». Spanish made a noun of it, which means it can be named out loud in a meeting, and a thing that can be named is harder to keep doing.