The word 'entrepreneur' comes from the French word 'entreprendre' (meaning to undertake) and the English word 'enterprise'. Thus, an entrepreneur is someone who undertakes enterprise. 'Enterprise' is generally defined as a bold or complex project or business.
Here's where definitions have become more nuanced over the past years.
The word 'entrepreneur' has become a compliment. As Alan Sugar once said on The Apprentice, "you can't call yourself an entrepreneur, it's something that other people call you!" I couldn't agree with him more. Perhaps, traditionally, going back to the root definition of the word 'entrepreneur', it could be a job description - nowadays it's a compliment. It's a way for people to call you innovative, intelligent and bold. I think you would need to be pretty sure of yourself to be able to call yourself those three words - it's similar to calling yourself 'beautiful' or 'stunning', it would be vain to call yourself such a description.
So, why am I writing this? If I'm going to write something on HuffPost it surely requires context, right? Here's your context then: The word 'entrepreneur' is a beautiful word which is being overused.
'Entrepreneur' deserves better treatment than words such as 'selfie' or 'bruv' - slang which have become overused to the point of being social suicide. It's a word which needs to be dealt with carefully and should only be used to describe truly innovative, bold characters. And, it should be a word ruled out from the list of words considered when describing yourself.
Scrolling through LinkedIn or Twitter, if the amount of people describing themselves as 'entrepreneurs' were actually 'entrepreneurs' the world would likely resemble Marty McFly's idea of 2015 than the actual 2015 which we live in today.
I believe that coming up with one idea doesn't classify yourself as an entrepreneur - it classifies you as a human who had an idea. A true entrepreneur is someone who has successful executed a truly groundbreaking concept - the Steve Jobs', Richard Branson's or Elon Musk's of the world.
Just because you sold sweets for £5 in the school playground doesn't you an entrepreneur - it makes you smart and, occasionally, capitalism in child form.
As with anything, this is something of opinion and perspective but, in my opinion, think twice before describing yourself as a 'multi award winning serial entrepreneur' unless you have truly won awards and changed the world, multiple times.
I can't wait for the next series of The Apprentice.