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.

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  1. 6 小時前

    tousle

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 23, 2025 is: tousle \TOW-zul\ verb To tousle something is to dishevel it—that is, to make it untidy or unkempt. Tousle is usually, though not always, used specifically when a person’s hair is being so treated. // Vic stood in front of the mirror and tousled his hair, trying to get a cool, disheveled look. [See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tousle) Examples: “One of her hands tousled her long hair, which she wore down, and the other hand hovered in front of her skirt as she hooked a thumb in its waistband. She paired the fashion set with a choker necklace and dangling hoop earrings.” — Meghan Roos, Parade, 21 Mar. 2024 Did you know? The verb tousle today is typically used for the action of [mussing](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/muss) someone’s hair playfully (“tousling the toddler’s hair”) or fussily (“tousling her tresses for that just-woke-up look”), but the word’s history is a bit edgier. Tousle and its synonym [touse](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/touse) come from -tousen (“to pull or handle roughly”), a [frequentative](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/frequentative) of the Middle English verb touselen. (A frequentative indicates repeated or recurrent action; sniffle, for example, is a frequentative of sniff.) Both tousle and touse have older meanings having to do with rough handling in general; before hair was tousled, people were—ouch. It’s no coincidence that another frequentative of -tousen, the Scots word tussillen, is the ancestor of the English verb [tussle](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tussle), meaning “to scuffle” or “to fight or struggle with someone by grabbing or pushing.”

    2 分鐘

  2. 1 天前

    astute

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 22, 2025 is: astute \uh-STOOT\ adjective Someone or something described as astute has or shows an ability to notice and understand things clearly. In other words, they are mentally sharp or clever. Astute can also describe someone who is crafty or wily. // They made some astute observations about the movie industry. // Astute readers will notice the error. [See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/astute) Examples: “Geraldine and Claire were out walking their dog, Daisy. They felt as though Daisy was very astute at reacting to their mood, rather than reflecting it.” — Robbie Meredith, BBC, 4 Dec. 2024 Did you know? [Road Runner](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Road-Runner) always bests Wile E. Coyote in the famous [Looney Tunes](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Looney-Tunes) cartoon series, but both characters help demonstrate meanings of the word astute. Astute comes from the Latin adjective astutus, meaning “cunning, crafty, or clever,” which in turn comes from the noun astus, meaning “craft.” The English adjective, accordingly, can describe both the crafty and the [wily](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wily). It’s easy to see how this applies to Wile E. Coyote: in each episode, Road Runner races along the highways of the American Southwest while the coyote sets an elaborate trap for the bird, usually with the aid of some goofy product ordered from the fictitious Acme company. But alas, Road Runner is astute, as in “mentally sharp or clever.” In other words, he is not only quick on his feet, but quick on the [uptake](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/uptake). He usually catches wind of the schemes, which ultimately backfire due to either the products’ chronic unreliability or Coyote’s own ineptitude. Road Runner, never captured or damaged, responds with a characteristic “Beep! Beep!” and runs off.

    2 分鐘

  3. 2 天前

    jabberwocky

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 21, 2025 is: jabberwocky \JAB-er-wah-kee\ noun Jabberwocky refers to meaningless speech or writing. // When the character gets angry or flustered, she talks in a sort of agitated jabberwocky that is really quite comical. [See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jabberwocky) Examples: "The British press now converted the book into their native tongue, that jabberwocky of bonkers hot takes and classist [snark](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snark). Facts were wrenched out of context, complex emotions were reduced to cartoonish idiocy, innocent passages were hyped into outrages—and there were so many falsehoods." — J. R. Moehringer, The New Yorker, 15 May 2023 Did you know? In his poem titled "Jabberwocky," from [Through the Looking-Glass](https://www.britannica.com/topic/Through-the-Looking-Glass), Lewis Carroll warned readers about a frightful beast: Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch! This nonsensical poem caught the public's fancy upon its publication in late 1871, and by the turn of the 20th century jabberwocky was being used as a generic term for meaningless speech or writing. The word [bandersnatch](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bandersnatch) has also seen some use as a general noun, with the meaning "a wildly grotesque or bizarre individual." It's a much rarer word than jabberwocky, though, and is entered only in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary.

    2 分鐘

  4. 3 天前

    flounder

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 20, 2025 is: flounder \FLOUN-der\ verb To flounder is to struggle, whether that struggle is about moving or obtaining footing (as in “horses floundering through deep snow”) or about knowing what to do or say. // Caught off-guard by the reporter’s question, the mayor floundered for a few moments before remembering the talking points he had rehearsed. [See the entry >](https://bit.ly/4aDmqQo) Examples: “In those early days we floundered in a city we didn’t know. Tottenham in 1992 wasn’t the London we’d imagined. There were no top hats, no smog, no Holmes, no Watson, no ladies, no gents, and no afternoon tea. Not for us. We lived in a different London. In our London, people swore and spat, drank, quarreled, and laughed in fretful bursts. They spoke strange words in accents we couldn’t parse.” — Leo Vardiashvili, Hard By a Great Forest, 2024 Did you know? There’s nothing fishy about flounder... the verb, that is. While the noun referring to a common food fish is of Scandinavian origin, the verb flounder, which dates to the late 16th century, is likely an alteration of an older verb, [founder](https://bit.ly/4iyyMNo). The two verbs have been confused ever since. Today, founder is most often used as a synonym of [fail](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fail), or, in contexts involving a waterborne vessel, as a word meaning “to fill with water and sink.” Formerly, it was also frequently applied when a horse stumbled badly and was unable to keep walking. It’s likely this sense of founder led to the original and now-obsolete meaning of flounder: “to stumble.” In modern use, flounder typically means “to struggle” or “to act clumsily”; the word lacks the finality of founder, which usually suggests complete collapse or failure, as that of a sinking ship.

    2 分鐘

  5. 4 天前

    obtuse

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 19, 2025 is: obtuse \ahb-TOOSS\ adjective Obtuse is a formal word that describes someone who is not able to think clearly or to understand what is obvious or simple. It can also suggest a refusal to see something apparent to others, or a willful ignorance of or insensitivity to the real facts of a situation. Obtuse can also describe something that is difficult to understand because it is unclear or imprecise. // They were too obtuse to take a hint. // The text is poorly written and downright obtuse. [See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obtuse) Examples: “Engineers love complicated problems, but we have a reputation for being obtuse about personal interactions. I often tell my fellow engineers, ‘You won't find any problems more complicated than those involving people.’” — Bill Austin, Inc.com, 15 Jan. 2025 Did you know? There’s a lot to understand about obtuse, so we’ll get straight to the point. Obtuse comes from a Latin word, obtusus, meaning “dull” or “blunt.” It can describe a geometric angle that is not [acute](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acute) (in other words one that exceeds 90 degrees but is less than 180 degrees), a leaf that is rounded at its free end, or a person who isn’t thinking clearly or who otherwise refuses to see something apparent to others—if someone asks you if you’re being obtuse about something, they are not paying you a compliment. Another common sense (no pun intended) of obtuse related to [apprehension](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apprehension) is “hard to comprehend,” often applied to speech or writing that isn’t clearly expressed or thought out. This sense may have developed due to the influence of two similar-sounding words: [abstruse]( https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abstruse), a formal word that also means “hard to comprehend,” and [obscure](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obscure), a word that can mean, among other things, “not readily understood or clearly expressed.”

    2 分鐘

  6. 5 天前

    chutzpah

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 18, 2025 is: chutzpah \KHOOTS-puh\ noun Chutzpah is audacious boldness often paired with reckless self-confidence. Someone with chutzpah dares to do or say things that seem shocking to others. // It took a lot of chutzpah to stand up to her boss the way she did. [See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chutzpah)1. list text here Examples: “... [Anne] Hathaway is not easily talked out of things she believes in. She took drama classes, understudied future Tony winner Laura Benanti in a production of Jane Eyre at 14, and had the chutzpah to write to an agent with her headshot at 15.” — Julie Miller, Vanity Fair, 25 Mar. 2024 Did you know? The word chutzpah has been boldly circulating through English since the mid-1800s. It comes from the Yiddish word khutspe, which comes in turn from the Hebrew word ḥuṣpāh. The ch in chutzpah indicates a rasping sound from the back of the throat that exists in many languages, including Yiddish. That sound is not part of English [phonology](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phonology), so it follows that the c is sometimes dropped in both the pronunciation and spelling of the word. Some speakers of Yiddish feel that chutzpah has been diluted in English use, no longer properly conveying the monumental nature of the gall that is implied. A classic example can be found in Leo Rosten’s 1968 book The Joys of Yiddish, which defines chutzpah as “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”

    2 分鐘

  7. 6 天前

    pertain

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 17, 2025 is: pertain \per-TAYN\ verb To pertain to someone or something is to relate, refer, or have a connection to that person or thing. // That law pertains only to people who live in this state. [See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pertain) Examples: "There are certain rules of conduct that pertain to office dressing no matter how lax your HR department may be. No shirt, no shoes, no job. But keeping it professional doesn’t have to mean feeling stuffy or boring ..." — Aemilia Madden, The Cut, 20 Nov. 2024 Did you know? Pertain comes to English via Anglo-French from the Latin verb pertinēre, meaning "to reach to" or "to belong." Pertinēre, in turn, was formed by combining the prefix per- (meaning "through") and tenēre ("to hold"). Tenēre is a popular root in English words and often manifests with the -tain spelling that can be seen in pertain. Other descendants include [abstain](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abstain), [contain](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/contain), [detain](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/detain), [maintain](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maintain), [obtain](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obtain), [retain](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retain), and [sustain](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sustain), to name a few of the more common ones. Not every -tain word has tenēre in its ancestry, though. [Ascertain](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ascertain), [attain](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attain), and [certain](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/certain) are certainly exceptions. And a few tenēre words don't follow the usual pattern: [tenacious](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tenacious) and [tenure](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tenure) are two.

    2 分鐘

  8. 2月16日

    non sequitur

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 16, 2025 is: non sequitur \NAHN-SEK-wuh-ter\ noun A non sequitur is a statement that either does not logically follow from, or is not clearly related to, what was previously said. // We were talking about the new restaurant when she threw in some non sequitur about her dog. [See the entry >](https://bit.ly/41CTd5R) Examples: “Late on Saturday, as members of Congress scrambled to strike a deal for legislation that would raise the nation’s debt ceiling, they agreed to a total non sequitur in the text they would release the next day. After a series of late-in-the-game interventions by lobbyists and energy executives, the draft bill declared the construction and operation of a natural gas pipeline to be ‘required in the national interest.’ It wasn’t really [germane](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/germane) to the debt ceiling, at least not in the literal sense.” — Jonathan Mingle, The New York Times, 1 June 2023 Did you know? Non sequitur comes directly from Latin, in which language it means “it does not follow.” Although the Latin non sequitur can constitute a phrase or even a complete sentence, in English non sequitur is a noun, and thus it follows that the plural of non sequitur is non sequiturs. Borrowed into English in the 16th century by logicians, non sequitur initially referred to a conclusion that did not follow the statements preceding it. The meaning has now broadened to include statements that are seemingly unrelated to the topic at hand, or that seem to come out of the blue. So if you ever forget the definition of non sequitur, just remember: a penny saved is a penny earned.

    2 分鐘

  9. 2月15日

    livid

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 15, 2025 is: livid \LIV-id\ adjective Livid means "very angry, enraged, or furious." It may also describe things having a dark purplish or reddish color. // The teen's parents were livid when they discovered she had lied about her whereabouts. // He had a livid bruise on his right arm. [See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/livid) Examples: "Activists and vulnerable nations were understandably livid at the failure to garner stronger commitments on the reduction of fossil fuel use, noting that ... fossil fuels are barely referenced despite being the primary driver of global emissions." — David Carlin, Forbes, 26 Nov. 2024 Did you know? Livid has a colorful history. The Latin adjective livēre, "to be blue," gave rise to Latin lividus, meaning "discolored by bruising." French adopted the word along with its meaning as livide, which English borrowed in the 15th century as livid. For a few centuries the English word described bruised flesh as well as a shade of dark gray and other colors having a dark grayish tone. By the 18th century people were livid, first by being pale with extreme emotion ("a pale, lean, livid face" —Henry James), and then by being reddish with the same ("His face glared with a livid red." —James Francis Barrett). By the late 19th century a livid person could also be furiously angry, which is the word's typical application today.

    2 分鐘

  10. 2月14日

    billet-doux

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 14, 2025 is: billet-doux \bill-ee-DOO\ noun A billet-doux is a love letter. The word's plural is billets-doux. // Since their relationship was long-distance, the couple thought it would be cute to send each other billets-doux on their anniversary. [See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/billet-doux) Examples: "... [Jon] Batiste creates splendid music—those of us with kids likely experienced it lately on his soundtrack to the Pixar hit 'Soul.' 'Batiste: Movement 11',' the composition of his that’s nominated for a Grammy in a classical category, is nearly two minutes of intense, pensive joy tinctured with darkness, of the kind that people send to each other as a billet-doux …" — John McWhorter, The New York Times, 25 Feb. 2022 Did you know? When love is in the air, it's time to put it down on paper. If you ever find yourself having trouble thinking of Valentine's Day or anniversary gift ideas, how about sending your sweetie pie a billet-doux that reminds them of your perfect [meet-cute](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meet-cute), or invites them to see the latest [rom-com](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rom-com)? Wouldn’t that be sweet? In French, billet doux means "sweet letter." English writers first fell in love with the word during the 17th century and have been committed to using it as a romantic alternative to "love letter" ever since.

    2 分鐘
  • 共 10 集

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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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