Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster
  • 4.5 (1.3K)
  • Books
  • Updated Daily

Free daily dose of word power from Merriam-Webster's experts

Episodes

  1. 17h ago

    deportment

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 14, 2026 is: deportment • \dih-PORT-munt\  • noun Deportment refers to the way in which one conducts oneself especially in a formal setting. // The new students were instructed in proper dress and deportment. See the entry > Examples: "The scholarship goes to a junior nursing student who has demonstrated 'academic achievement and abilities, promise as a future nurse, personal deportment and other outstanding characteristics,' the college said in a news release." — The Citizen (Auburn, New York), 24 June 2026 Did you know? Deportment, like a number of English words, has its roots in Latin portare, meaning "to carry." Other portare descendants include such familiar terms as import ("to bring from an external source"), transport ("to bring from one place to another"), and portfolio, which by its oldest meaning refers to a case for carrying papers. In the case of deportment, the thing we "carry" is ourselves. Deportment can refer simply to one's demeanor, or it can refer to behavior formed by social conditioning and often conforming to conventional rules of propriety. A 17-year-old Emily Dickinson applied the latter meaning when she wrote to her brother, Austin: "Are you not gratified that I am so rapidly gaining correct ideas of female propriety and sedate deportment?"

  2. 1d ago

    abscond

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 13, 2026 is: abscond • \ab-SKAHND\  • verb To abscond is to leave, flee, or escape a place in secret and go into hiding. Often, someone is said to have absconded with something. // It was mid-semester, when fantasies about absconding from school and leaving the stress of exams behind abound. See the entry > Examples: “So having a variety of financial intermediaries is good. But they need to be regulated and supervised by objective parties using objective standards. If not, someone could open a bank, take deposits and abscond to a tropical isle.” — Edward Lotterman, The St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press, 23 Nov. 2025 Did you know? In “Take the Money and Run,” a 1976 song by the Steve Miller Band, the singer punctuates a song about teenage bandits with the catchy refrain “Go on, take the money and run.” Granted, the song probably wouldn’t have charted had it been titled “Abscond,” but the meaning would have been the same. Abscond is a word most often used in formal contexts for when someone is running and hiding from the law, often with cash or other ill-gotten gains. In legal circles it’s used specifically when someone flies like an eagle from a jurisdiction to evade the legal process, as in “absconded from parole.” The history of abscond doesn’t evade scrutiny: it comes from the Latin verb abscondere, meaning “to hide away.” (That word’s root is condere, meaning “to conceal.”) Today, whether some joker absconds by going to the country to bury some treasure or by taking a jet airliner beyond the law’s reach, they are, in essence, hiding themselves away.

  3. 2d ago

    nexus

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 12, 2026 is: nexus • \NEK-sus\  • noun A nexus is a relationship or connection between people or things. Nexus can also refer to a connected group or series or to the center or focus of something. // The cultural district serves as a nexus for art and cuisine. See the entry > Examples: “The eclectic costume design by Ryan Matthieu Smith suggests Eastern Europe at the nexus of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: loosely fitting frocks and vests, layered and embroidered, and hats in myriad geometric shapes ...” — Manuel Mendoza, The Dallas Morning News, 1 Mar. 2026 Did you know? If you’re unfamiliar with the word nexus, the popular, long-running video game series The Legend of Zelda provides an object lesson in its several definitions. When nexus came into English from Latin in the 17th century, it meant “connection” or “link.” Eventually, people began using it to refer to a connected group or series of things, as in “a nexus of relationships.” In recent decades it has taken on a third meaning, “center” or “hub,” perhaps from the notion that a point in the center of an arrangement serves to join together the objects that surround it. Now, one might plausibly say that the 20 Zelda games (not counting remakes and spin-offs) themselves form a nexus, as each represents an installment in a long, twisty saga with numerous echoes and callbacks to other games in the series. Most of these feature the fictional land of Hyrule, which often presents magical nexuses to shadowy alternate dimensions (1991’s A Link to the Past), the past (2011’s Skyward Sword), or the underworld (2023’s Tears of the Kingdom) that the hero, Link (ahem) must traverse. As for nexus’s third meaning, Hyrule’s map is nearly always situated around a central nexus, or hub, in the form of the castle where the titular Zelda lives. (If you’re into gaming or curious about its lingo, don’t miss the article “Popular Gaming Terms Explained”).

  4. 3d ago

    galore

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 11, 2026 is: galore • \guh-LOR\  • adjective Galore is an informal adjective that describes something as being in large numbers or amounts. It is always used postpositively, that is, after a noun. // The store promises bargains galore on Black Friday. See the entry > Examples: “The rest of the home is filled with what Josh calls ‘love stuff,’ like an entire wall of family pictures, his mother’s recipe box, random heirlooms, and artwork galore, including his grandfather’s acid etching prints and three-dimensional pieces made by his mother … who worked in wood and papier-mâché.” — Meg McConahey, The Mercury News (San Jose, California), 1 July 2026 Did you know? Galore means “in large numbers or amounts,” making it a synonym of useful words like abundant and plentiful. But its charm lies not in its meaning but in its sound and syntax. Galore doesn’t sound like familiar Germanic or Latinate words, and for good reason—it’s one of a small number of Irish borrowings, coming from go leor, meaning “enough.” It also takes an odd position in phrases: it’s used postpositively, which means that it follows the word or words it modifies. First defined in one our dictionaries way back in 1864, the word was for many years obscure and a bit of a conundrum. Limited evidence of the word in use, along with its unusual syntax, led to some editorial back-and-forth about whether galore was an adjective or adverb; one can see how in a phrase like “someone who has money galore” galore might have been interpreted as modifying the verb have rather than the noun money. But by the seventh edition of our Collegiate dictionary, published in 1963, enough evidence had accumulated to confidently declare galore an adjective. If you’re curious about the Great Galore Grammar Debate, this article has information galore.

  5. 4d ago

    Luddite

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 10, 2026 is: Luddite • \LUH-dyte\  • noun Luddite refers to someone who is opposed to change, and especially to technological change. // My friends call me a Luddite for refusing to use chat bots. See the entry > Examples: “Today, a Luddite is your grandparent who keeps looking at the screen rather than the camera when on Zoom, the Boomer who types in all-capital letters, the grouchy man who refuses to get a smart phone, the professor spewing invective against Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok. … But the Luddites weren’t simple-minded primitives who objected to technology out of ignorance; they were dedicated craftsmen in the looming guilds who despised the shoddy craftsmanship of the mechanized contraptions replacing them, and of those same machines robbing them of their livelihoods.” — Ed Simon, Writing During the Apocalypse: Reflections on the Great Unraveling, 2026 Did you know? Long before your Luddite friend was waxing poetic about how blissful it is to not have a smartphone, Luddites were protesting the textile machinery that was gradually replacing them. It was toward the end of 1811, in the vicinity of Nottingham, England, when handicraftsmen formed organized bands and began to riot for the destruction of the new machinery. Their name is of uncertain origin, but it may be connected to a (probably mythical) person named Ned Ludd. According to an unsubstantiated account in George Pellew's Life of Lord Sidmouth (1847), Ned Ludd was a Leicestershire villager of the late 1700s who, in a fit of rage, rushed into a stocking weaver's house and destroyed his equipment; subsequently, Ludd's name was proverbially connected with machinery destruction. With the onset of the information age, Luddite gained a broader sense describing anyone who shuns new technology.

  6. 5d ago

    inscrutable

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 9, 2026 is: inscrutable • \in-SKROO-tuh-bul\  • adjective Inscrutable means "not readily investigated, interpreted, or understood." It often describes things that are mysterious or difficult to comprehend. // His professor wore an inscrutable expression throughout the oral exam. See the entry > Examples: "The paper makes significant progress on an unresolved aspect of the inscrutable math equation that determines how the primes are distributed along the number line." — Joseph Howlett, Scientific American, 12 Aug. 2026 Did you know? Scrutinizing the inscrutable may be futile: even close scrutiny can fail to decipher it. Scrutinizing the scrutable, on the other hand, is likely to yield some understanding. All of these scrut- words have the same Latin root: scrutari, meaning "to search or examine." While scrutiny, scrutinize, and inscrutable all prove themselves useful in everyday discourse, English speakers don’t tend to call much on scrutable, which functions as a synonym of comprehensible.

  7. 6d ago

    etiquette

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 8, 2026 is: etiquette • \ET-ih-kut\  • noun Etiquette refers to rules or customs that dictate what behavior is considered appropriate and expected in a particular setting. // Her failure to respond to the invitation was a serious breach of etiquette. See the entry > Examples: “My first interaction with The Real Housewives franchise happened sometime in 2015, when my partner became hooked on the show. I had just begun work on what I expected to be a big and research-heavy multi-generational family novel, and all I could hear was a chorus of accusations about who said what to whom, who lied to whom, and who hadn’t followed the correct etiquette at a charity event.” — Saleen Haddad, Literary Hub, 24 Feb. 2026 Did you know? If you’re looking for a polite topic of conversation to raise at your next gathering of word lovers, we’ve got just the ticket. The French word étiquette means “ticket”; its direct French ancestor also referred to a label attached to something for description or identification. Spaniards of the 16th-century adopted the French word (altering it to etiqueta), and used it to refer to the written protocols describing the behavior demanded of those who appeared at court. Eventually, etiqueta came to be applied to the court ceremonies themselves as well as to the documents which outlined their requirements. Word of this linguistic development got back to the French, who then expanded their word’s meaning to include “proper court behavior” along with its “label” sense. By the middle of the 18th century English speakers had taken on etiquette as their own, applying it to the rules that indicate the proper and polite way to behave, whether in the presence of royalty or not.

  8. Oct 7

    discreet

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 7, 2026 is: discreet • \dih-SKREET\  • adjective Discreet describes someone who is careful about not allowing something to be known or noticed by many people. It can also describe something that is not likely to be seen or noticed by many people. // She was always very discreet about her personal life. // A photographer followed the singer at a discreet distance. See the entry > Examples: “Expectations surrounding their nuptials were high. But the couple opted for a discreet ceremony that took place in Cascais, Portugal, in complete privacy.” — Ahad Sanwari, Hello Magazine, 13 Aug. 2026 Did you know? If you’ve ever mixed up discreet and discrete, you’re not alone. Which to use when writing is tricky to discern, given their identical pronunciation and shared etymology; both terms (and their relatives discern and certain) ultimately trace back to the Latin verb cernere, meaning “to sift, discern, decide, determine.” Yet despite these similarities, the words have separate—one might even say discrete—meanings. Something or someone described as discreet, with double e's, is unlikely to be known, seen, or noticed by many people (as in “found a discreet way to handle the problem”). Discrete, with its separate e's, describes things that are separate and different from each other (as in “a process broken down into a number of discrete steps”). A handy mnemonic for remembering which is which can be found in those e's: the t in discrete separates the two e’s.

  9. Oct 6

    regimen

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 6, 2026 is: regimen • \REJ-uh-mun\  • noun Regimen refers to a plan or set of rules about food, exercise, etc., designed to make someone become or stay healthy. // Sherry’s personal trainer started her on a workout regimen of 30 minutes on the treadmill followed by 30 minutes of weight training. See the entry > Examples: "The last step in a great antiaging skin care regimen is, of course, sunscreen." — Alanna Martine Kilkeary, Glamour, 27 Apr. 2026 Did you know? Being but humble lexicographers, we cannot say whether an apple a day truly keeps the doctor away, but as far as regimens go, one could do a lot worse than snackin' on a McIntosh. Regimen, which usually refers to a system of rules or guidelines—often for living a healthy life or taking a regular dose of exercise—comes ultimately from a Latin verb, regere, meaning "to direct." Regere led in apple-pie order to the English word regimen, first by way of the Latin noun regimen, meaning "steering" or "control," and then via the Medieval Latin regimen, referring to a set of rules. Other regere descendants fell further from the tree, including correct, erect, region, rule, and surge. Be sure not to confuse regimen with regiment, which refers to a military unit, as doing so could upset the apple cart.

  10. Oct 5

    perseverate

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 5, 2026 is: perseverate • \per-SEV-uh-rayt\  • verb To perseverate is to intently focus one's attention on a thought or thoughts. Perseverate can also mean "to recur or repeat continually." // They teach that there is no use in perseverating about past regrets. // Nervous thoughts perseverated in the back of her mind for weeks leading up to the event, but it was a complete success. See the entry > Examples: "Why do we remember the close losses more than the wins? ... We perseverate on Milwaukee's 24-point comeback with 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter but forget the Wolves trailed by 16 with less than five minutes to play before beating Houston earlier this year." — Michael Rand, The Minnesota Star Tribune, 14 Apr. 2025 Did you know? Looking at perseverate and perseveration, you may guess that the latter was formed by adding a suffix to the former, but that is not the case. Perseveration is actually the older term by a few years. In the early 1900s, psychologists adopted perseveration from German for the act of repeating a behavior over and over again—for instance, continually repeating the same syllable or word might be called "verbal perseveration." Shortly afterward, those scientists wanted a verb for such acts of repetition, so they changed the -ation of perseveration to -ate and perseverate was born. Perseverate continued to evolve and persevere in the English language, which led to its broader meanings, "to recur or repeat continually" and "to fixate."

  • 10 Episodes

Hosts & Guests

4.5
out of 5
1,293 Ratings

About

Free daily dose of word power from Merriam-Webster's experts

Information

You Might Also Like