Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 6, 2026 is: inexorable \i-NEK-suh-ruh-bul\ adjective Inexorable is a formal word used to describe something that cannot be stopped or changed. // For some, the changing autumn foliage is a beautiful yet bittersweet reminder of the inexorable march of time. See the entry > Examples: “At the summer solstice, the Sun ‘stands still’—the meaning of the Latin solstice—and begins its progression back toward the south. Days shorten, shadows lengthen, and the cold and dreariness of winter return. Europeans across the entire continent have noted this simple and inexorable cycle for millennia. Neolithic monuments such as Ireland’s Newgrange and England’s Stonehenge, both of which date from around 5,000 years ago, were built to mark solstices.” — Thomas A. DuBois, The Conversation, 17 June 2026 Did you know? You can beseech and implore until you’re blue in the face, but that won’t have any effect on something that’s inexorable. Inexorable, which has been part of the English language since the 1500s, was originally often applied to people, desires, or actions held to be particularly resistant to persuasion (or dissuasion). In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, for example, Romeo declares that his “intents” are “more fierce and more inexorable far / Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.” These days, it is usually used to describe the progression of something through time, or toward an end result, commonly modifying nouns like drift, pull, rise, march, decline, or tide. Inexorable comes from the Latin adjective inexorabilis, which is itself a combination of the prefix in-, meaning “not,” plus exorabilis, meaning “pliant.” If you’re wondering whether English has an exorable meaning “capable of being moved by entreaty,” indeed it does, though exorable is far less common than its antonym.
