Social, economic, environmental, and climate-related risks force us to focus on sustainability more and more. National and international commitments, such as signatures of the Paris Agreement and national policy changes towards sustainability transformation, current and planned legally binding regulations indicate that business organizations, government entities, and economies cannot avoid sustainability transformation anymore. As scientific change management approaches suggest, the first steps in a planned transformation involve learning new skills and developing knowledge. Our interactions with university students and professional contacts in different industries confirm the scientific findings and practical experience in this context, addressing the urgent need to develop new common language materials in the sustainability field. Therefore, we have started a dictionary project on sustainable finance, mainly for university students and industry professionals. Consumers also need such a dictionary to develop their sustainability literacy with core technical terms. For example, individuals might frequently hear the terms “climate change”, “global warming”, “carbon footprint”, “greenwashing”, “greenhouse gases”, “ESG rating”, “brown economy”, and “sustainable development” in the daily news. What do they mean, and how are they connected? Moreover, there are some overlapping technical terms, which might cause confusion in the sustainability field, such as “corporate social responsibility”, “corporate sustainability”, and “corporate governance”. Hence, there is no doubt that a systematic compilation of sustainability terms in an understandable way is much needed today