Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Build your vocabulary with Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day! Each day a Merriam-Webster editor offers insight into a fascinating new word -- explaining its meaning, current use, and little-known details about its origin.

Episodes

  1. 20 HR AGO

    emancipation

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 19, 2025 is: emancipation • \ih-man-suh-PAY-shun\  • noun Emancipation refers to the act of freeing someone from the restraint, control, or power of another. It is used especially for the act of freeing someone from slavery. // Jomo Kenyatta played a key role in the emancipation of Kenya from European rule in the 1960s and became the first president of the newly independent nation. See the entry > Examples: “Rappahannock County’s calming beauty and rolling hills hold stories from the Civil War era waiting to be told. Howard Lambert, a Culpeper native and the first African American president of the Brandy Station Foundation, has worked tirelessly to bring these stories to life, especially those of Black Civil War soldiers. ... He also has a personal connection to the Civil War. His great-great-uncle, Fielding Turner, served in the 20th United States Colored Troops (USCT) Infantry Regiment, fighting in pivotal battles and helping to announce emancipation in Texas now commemorated as Juneteenth.” — Ayana SummerlinRosa, The Culpeper (Virginia) Star-Exponent, 11 Mar. 2025 Did you know? To emancipate someone (including oneself) is to free them from restraint, control, or the power of another, and especially to free them from bondage or enslavement. It follows that the noun emancipation refers to the act or practice of emancipating. The Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, for example, ordered that enslaved people living in the Confederate states be released from the bonds of ownership and made free people. It took more than two years for news of the proclamation to reach the enslaved communities in the distant state of Texas. The arrival of the news on June 19 (of 1865) is now celebrated as a national holiday—Juneteenth or Emancipation Day.

    2 min

  2. 1 DAY AGO

    jeopardize

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 18, 2025 is: jeopardize • \JEP-er-dyze\  • verb To jeopardize something or someone is to put them at risk or in danger. // The wrong decision could seriously jeopardize the success of the project. See the entry > Examples: “To keep the cub from forming bonds with people that could jeopardize his return to the wild, staff members charged with his care are dressing up in bear costumes, including a mask, fur coat and leather gloves.” — Summer Lin, The Los Angeles Times, 24 May 2025 Did you know? Imagine you’re a contestant on a game show, and your task is to provide a question as a response to this statement from the host: “This word was once controversial, and in 1870 a grammarian called it ‘a foolish and intolerable word,’ a view shared by many 19th-century critics.” If you answered, “What is jeopardize?,” you might be going home with some money! The preferred word back then was jeopard, which first appeared in print in the 14th century. The upstart jeopardize didn’t arrive until the late 16th century, and took a while to catch on. In 1828, Noah Webster himself declared jeopardize to be “a modern word, used by respectable writers in America, but synonymous with jeopard, and therefore useless.” Unfortunately for the champions of jeopard, increased usage of jeopardize ultimately put the former word in jeopardy. Jeopard is now only rarely heard.

    2 min

  3. 2 DAYS AGO

    apologia

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 17, 2025 is: apologia • \ap-uh-LOH-jee-uh\  • noun An apologia is a defense especially of one's opinions, position, or actions. // The opinion piece reads like an apologia for the industry's reckless behavior. See the entry > Examples: "Yes, Barbie is a polarizing toy ... but [Greta] Gerwig leaped right to what else Barbie is: a potent, complicated, contradictory symbol that stands near the center of a decades-long and still-running argument about how to be a woman. ... The movie is a celebration of Barbie and a subterranean apologia for Barbie." — Willa Paskin, The New York Times, 11 July 2023 Did you know? As you might expect, apologia is a close relative of apology. Both words come from Late Latin; apologia came to English as a direct borrowing while apology traveled through Middle French. The Latin apologia can be traced back to the Greek verb apologeîsthai, meaning "to speak in defense; defend oneself." In their earliest English uses, apologia and apology meant basically the same thing: a formal defense or justification of one's actions or opinions. Nowadays, however, the two are distinct. The modern apology generally involves an admission of wrongdoing and an expression of regret for past actions, while an apologia typically focuses on explaining, justifying, or making clear the grounds for some course of action, belief, or position.

    2 min

  4. 3 DAYS AGO

    garrulous

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 16, 2025 is: garrulous • \GAIR-uh-lus\  • adjective Someone described as garrulous is very talkative. When garrulous is used to describe a piece of language (such as a speech), it means “containing many and often too many words; wordy.” // One of the dinner party guests was a garrulous poet whose stories kept most of us in stitches. // We tried our best to stay awake during the principal’s garrulous speech. See the entry > Examples: “Verbosity [in Academy Awards acceptance speeches] became more of a problem with the advent of television coverage in the 1950s. As millions of viewers watched from around the world, actors and directors—also cinematographers, sound editors and costume designers—often lingered in the spotlight. The academy eventually instituted a 45-second time limit and directed the orchestra to play garrulous winners off stage.” — David Wharton, The Los Angeles Times, 8 Mar. 2024 Did you know? We all know someone who blabs, gabs, or even confabs a little longer than necessary. You might refer to such a person as a chatty Cathy, but “garrulous Gary” would also make a perfectly apt nom de guerre. Garrulous, after all, is a 17th century Latin borrowing that has its origin in garrīre, meaning “to chatter, talk rapidly.” That Latin root is probably imitative in origin—that is, it was coined to imitate what it refers to. English has a number of words that are imitative in origin, among them several others that can describe the actions of that one friend who does all the talking, such as babble and chatter.

    2 min

  5. 4 DAYS AGO

    progeny

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 15, 2025 is: progeny • \PRAH-juh-nee\  • noun Progeny refers to the child or descendant of a particular parent or family. Progeny can also refer to the offspring of an animal or plant, or broadly to something that is the product of something else. The plural of progeny is progeny. // Many Americans are the progeny of immigrants. // The champion thoroughbred passed on his speed, endurance, and calm temperament to his progeny, many of whom became successful racehorses themselves. // This landmark study is the progeny of many earlier efforts to explore the phenomenon. See the entry > Examples: “‘I am (We are) our ancestors’ wildest dreams.’ The phrase originated from New Orleans visual artist, activist, and filmmaker Brandan Odums, and was popularized by influential Black figures like Ava Duvernay, who used the phrase in tribute to the ancestors of First Lady Michelle Obama. Melvinia Shields, who was born a slave in 1844, would be survived by five generations of progeny, ultimately leading to her great-great-great granddaughter—Michelle Obama ...” — Christopher J. Schell, “Hope for the Wild in Afrofuturism,” 2024 Did you know? Progeny is the progeny of the Latin verb prōgignere, meaning “to beget.” That Latin word is itself an offspring of the prefix prō-, meaning “forth,” and gignere, which can mean “to beget” or “to bring forth.” Gignere has produced a large family of English descendants, including benign, engine, genius, germ, indigenous, and genuine. Gignere even paired up with prō- again to produce a close relative of progeny: the noun progenitor can mean “an ancestor in the direct line,” “a biologically ancestral form,” or “a precursor or originator.”

    2 min

  6. 5 DAYS AGO

    vexillology

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 14, 2025 is: vexillology • \vek-suh-LAH-luh-jee\  • noun Vexillology is the study of flags. // An expert in vexillology, Cynthia has an impressive collection of flags displayed in her home. See the entry > Examples: "... flags should have simple elements, a limited number of colors, and no words. One of the tenets of vexillology is that the elements of the flag should be simple enough to be easily drawn by a child." — The Toledo (Ohio) Blade, 9 Jan. 2025 Did you know? "The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history." Woodrow Wilson was speaking of the U.S. flag when he made that statement in an address in June of 1915, but those who engage in vexillology—that is, vexillologists—would likely find the comment applicable to any national banner. Vexillologists undertake scholarly investigations of flags, producing papers with titles such as "A Review of the Changing Proportions of Rectangular Flags since Medieval Times, and Some Suggestions for the Future." In the late 1950s, they coined vexillology as a name for their field of research, basing it on vexillum, the Latin term for a square flag or banner of the ancient Roman cavalry. The adjectives vexillologic and vexillological and the noun vexillologist followed soon thereafter.

    2 min

  7. 6 DAYS AGO

    rambunctious

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 13, 2025 is: rambunctious • \ram-BUNK-shuss\  • adjective Rambunctious describes someone or something showing uncontrolled exuberance. // On my first day of student teaching, I was tasked with managing a class of rambunctious youngsters. See the entry > Examples: "To juvenile loggerhead sea turtles, a tasty squid might as well be a disco ball. When they sense food—or even think some might be nearby—these reptiles break into an excited dance. ... Researchers recently used this distinctive behavior to test whether loggerheads could identify the specific magnetic field signatures of places where they had eaten in the past. The results, published in Nature, reveal that these rambunctious reptiles dance when they encounter magnetic conditions they associate with food." — Jack Tamisiea, Scientific American, 12 Feb. 2025 Did you know? Rambunctious first appeared in print in the early half of the 19th century, at a time when the fast-growing United States was forging its identity and indulging in a fashion for colorful new coinages suggestive of the young nation's optimism and exuberance. Rip-roaring, scalawag, scrumptious, hornswoggle, and skedaddle are other examples of the lively language of that era. Did Americans alter the largely British rumbustious because it sounded, well, British? That could be. Rumbustious, which first appeared in Britain in the late 1700s just after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was probably based on robustious, a much older adjective meaning both "robust" and "boisterous."

    2 min

  8. 12 JUN

    impute

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 12, 2025 is: impute • \im-PYOOT\  • verb To impute something, such as a motive, act, or emotion, to a person or thing is to assert that the person or thing is guilty of that motive, act, emotion, etc. // It is shocking that they would impute such awful motives to me. See the entry > Examples: “California is about to ease into the 2026 race for governor, and if you can pick any of the current candidates from a police lineup, either you work in Sacramento, have an unhealthy obsession with state politics, or both. That’s not to impute criminality on the part of any of those running to succeed the term-limited Gavin Newsom. ... Rather, those bidding to become California’s 41st governor aren’t exactly a collection of name-in-lights celebrities.” — Mark Z. Barabak, The Los Angeles Times, 9 Jan. 2025 Did you know? Impute is a formal word typically used in contexts in which a motive, act, or emotion is credited or ascribed to someone, especially falsely or unfairly. For example, if you impute dishonesty to someone you’re asserting that they’re not telling the truth. And if you impute selfish motives to someone’s actions you’re asserting that they were motivated by selfishness. In the form imputed the word is often paired with income: imputed income is income calculated from the supposed value of intangible or non-cash sources, such as use of a company car, or an employee discount. What’s the connection between these meanings? Both involve considering someone or something in a particular way, tying each meaning to the word’s Latin ancestor: putare means “to consider.”

    2 min

  9. 11 JUN

    debilitating

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 11, 2025 is: debilitating • \dih-BILL-uh-tay-ting\  • adjective Debilitating is a formal word used to describe things that seriously impair strength or the ability to function. // She suffers from debilitating migraines. // The class helped him conquer his debilitating fear of public speaking. See the entry > Examples: "Worry is such a debilitating thing that robs you of your energy ..." — Georgia Nicols, The Denver Post, 3 Apr. 2025 Did you know? Debilitating describes things that cause serious impairment of strength or ability to function. The word appears in both medical and general contexts; someone can suffer from debilitating nausea or debilitating stage fright. An adjective that takes the form of a verb, debilitating dates to the mid-17th century, making it the youngest of a trio: its source, the verb debilitate ("to impair the strength of"), dates to the early 16th century, and the noun debility ("weakness, infirmity") has been in use since the 15th century. All come from the Latin word for "weak," debilis. Polyglots may recognize the influence of debilis in words from Spanish, Russian, Czech, Turkish, Danish, and many other languages as well.

    2 min

  10. 10 JUN

    minutia

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 10, 2025 is: minutia • \muh-NOO-shee-uh\  • noun Minutia refers to a small or minor detail. It is usually used in its plural form minutiae. // Unaccustomed to legalese, I was bewildered by the contract's minutiae. See the entry > Examples: “The novel is an intricate thatch of corkscrew twists, vivid characters, dead-on colloquial dialogue, and lawyerly minutiae that culminates in a courtroom showdown worthy of Dominick Dunne.” — David Friend, Vanity Fair, 1 Apr. 2025 Did you know? We’ll try not to bore you with the minor details of minutia, though some things are worth noting about the word’s history and usage. It’ll only take a minute! Minutia was borrowed into English in the 18th century from the Latin plural noun minutiae, meaning “trifles” or “details,” which comes from the singular noun minutia, meaning “smallness.” In English, minutia is most often used in the plural as either minutiae (pronounced \muh-NOO-shee-ee\) or, on occasion, as simply minutia. The Latin minutia, incidentally, comes from minutus (also the ancestor of the familiar English word minute), an adjective meaning “small” that was created from the verb minuere, meaning “to lessen.”

    2 min
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Build your vocabulary with Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day! Each day a Merriam-Webster editor offers insight into a fascinating new word -- explaining its meaning, current use, and little-known details about its origin.

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