Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 7, 2018 is:woolgathering \WOOL-gath-uh-ring\ noun: indulgence in idle daydreamingExamples:My woolgathering in the backseat was abruptly interrupted by a question from the taxi driver."I love the feeling of being on a train, the rumble and roar that seem to aid woolgathering, and I never tire of staring out the window, no matter the scenery." — Karl Zimmermann, The Los Angeles Times, 3 Sept. 2017Did you know?Woolgathering once literally referred to the act of gathering loose tufts of wool that had gotten caught on bushes and fences as sheep passed by. As you might imagine, woolgathering was not the most profitable of enterprises; its practitioners must have seemed to wander aimlessly, gaining little for their efforts. In the mid-16th century, woolgathering began to appear in figurative phrases such as "my wits went a woolgathering"—in other words, "my mind went wandering aimlessly." From there, it wasn't long before the word woolgathering came to suggest foolish or purposeless mind-wandering.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 6, 2018 is:scarify \SKAIR-uh-fye\ verb1 : to make scratches or small cuts in (something, such as the skin)2 : to lacerate the feelings of3 : to break up, loosen, or roughen the surface of (something, such as a field or road)4 : to cut or soften the wall of (a hard seed) to hasten germinationExamples:"Recent harvests on city-owned land have removed on average about 50 percent of the standing biomass, which is not low-impact forestry. It is done with large, commercial-scale logging equipment that reduces biodiversity and scarifies the forest soil." — Ralph Baker, The Sentinel & Enterprise (Fitchburg, Massachusetts), 18 July 2017"Canna seeds need to be scarified by filing through the hard shells before they germinate." — Tony Tomeo, The Chico (California) Enterprise-Record, 5 Jan. 2018Did you know?You get two words for the price of one with scarify. The first scarify appeared in English in the 15th century with the meaning "to make scratches or cuts in" and later developed a figurative application of "cutting" someone emotionally. This word is ultimately derived from a Greek verb meaning "to scratch an outline." The second homograph turned up in the late 18th century and gained currency by the 20th century. This scarify was formed by combining scare with -ify, possibly as a combination of scare and terrify, and it predictably means "to scare or frighten."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 5, 2018 is:rabble \RAB-ul\ noun1 : a disorganized or confused collection of things2 a : a disorganized or disorderly crowd of people : mobb : the lowest class of peopleExamples:The university chancellor required extra security to help get him through the rabble of protestors."Perhaps most importantly, since prescriptive rules are so psychologically unnatural that only those with access to the right schooling can abide by them, they serve as shibboleths, differentiating the elite from the rabble." — Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct, 1994Did you know?Rabble has been with the English language since its appearance in Middle English (as rabel) around the turn of the 15th century. The Middle English rabel (originally used to denote a pack or swarm of animals or insects) may have come from the verb rabel which meant "to babble" (despite the similarity in sound and meaning, however, babble and rabble are linguistically unrelated). The verb rabel is related to Middle Dutch rabbelen and Low German rabbeln, meaning "to speak rapidly or indistinctly" or "to chatter." So how do we get from babbling to crowds of people? The connecting link may be the idea of confusion. Rabble, in its earliest uses, could indicate a pack of animals, a swarm of insects, or a confused collection of things, in addition to a confused or meaningless string of words.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 4, 2018 is:cursory \KER-suh-ree\ adjective: rapidly and often superficially performed or produced : hastyExamples:James gave the instructions only a cursory look before he began to assemble the shelves and didn't realize until he was partway through that he would need a power drill."The police report has been filed, but a detective won't be on the case until Tuesday. Knowing LA, there are so many automobile thefts that it may not get much more than a cursory acknowledgement from the police." — Bradley Brownell, Jalopnik, 28 Jan. 2018Did you know?Cursory and its synonyms superficial and shallow all mean "lacking in depth or care"—but these words are not used in exactly the same way in all cases. Cursory, which comes from the Latin verb currere ("to run"), implies speed and stresses a lack of attention to detail. While cursory suggests a lack of thoroughness, superficial implies a concern only with surface aspects or obvious features. An analysis of a problem might be labeled "superficial" if it considers only the obvious and fails to dig deeper into the issue. Shallow is more generally derogatory in implying lack of depth in knowledge, reasoning, emotions, or character, as in "insensitive and shallow comments."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 3, 2018 is:elucidate \ih-LOO-suh-dayt\ verb1 : to make lucid especially by explanation or analysis2 : to give a clarifying explanationExamples:"In 'Darwin and the Meaning of Flowers' Sacks recounts how, late in his life and in poor health, Darwin turned his attention from animals to plants, continuing to elucidate his theory of evolution when he could no longer undertake voyages." — Suzanne Koven, The Boston Globe, 26 Nov. 2017"The D.A. was engaging and insightful as he elucidated upon not only the proper steps to get a felony removed from your criminal background, but also the procedures of diversion and executive pardon." — James E. Cherry, The Jackson (Tennessee) Sun, 26 Nov. 2017Did you know?To elucidate is to make something clear that was formerly murky or confusing—and it is perfectly clear how the modern term got that meaning. Elucidate traces to the Latin term lucidus, which means "lucid." Lucidus, in turn, descends from the verb lucēre, meaning "to shine." So elucidating can be thought of as the figurative equivalent of shining a light on something to make it easier to see. Lucēre has also produced other shining offspring in English. Among its descendants are lucid itself (which can mean "shining," "clear-headed," or "easily understood"), lucent (meaning "giving off light" or "easily seen through"), and translucent (meaning "partly transparent" or "clear enough for light to pass through").See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 2, 2018 is:nondescript \nahn-dih-SKRIPT\ adjective1 : belonging or appearing to belong to no particular class or kind : not easily described2 : lacking distinctive or interesting qualities : dull, drabExamples:The famous spy was a quiet, nondescript man that people had a difficult time describing even a few minutes after meeting him, which was clearly an advantage in his profession."Crowds of tech aficionados, news crews and the simply curious turned out for the public opening of Amazon's checkout-free convenience store Monday, giving a generally nondescript sidewalk the air of an Apple store the day a new iPhone comes out." — Elizabeth Weise and Amity Addrisi, The Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, 23 Jan. 2018Did you know?It is relatively easy to describe the origins of nondescript (and there's a hint in the first part of this sentence). Nondescript was formed by combining the prefix non- (meaning "not") with descriptus, the past participle of the Latin verb describere, meaning "to describe." It is no surprise, then, that when the word was adopted in the late 17th century by English speakers, it was typically applied to something (such as a genus or species) that had not yet been described. Other descriptive descendants of describere in English include describe, description, and descriptive itself, as well as the rare philosophical term descriptum ("something that is described").See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 1, 2018 is:agon \AH-gahn\ noun: conflict; especially : the dramatic conflict between the chief characters in a literary workExamples:"The agon of the central character, self-besieged or plagued by circumstance, runs through the history of the director's films, as does the suspicion that man's brutality to man may have a penitential purpose." — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 22 Dec. 2016"There is always a fierce struggle—an agon—in the soul of the poet between her own poetic universe and that which precedes her, and against which she is to make her voice heard." — Costica Bradatan, The Los Angeles Review of Books, 24 Sept. 2017Did you know?Agon comes from the Greek word agōn, which is translated with a number of meanings, among them "contest," "competition at games," and "gathering." In ancient Greece, agons (the word is also pluralized in English as agones) were contests held during public festivals. The contests—among them the ancient Olympics, on which our modern Olympics is modeled—involved everything from athletics to chariot and horse racing to music and literature. Agon in the realm of literature refers to the dramatic conflict between the main characters in a Greek play or, more broadly, between the chief characters in any literary work. The word is also occasionally used to refer to conflict in general.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 28, 2018 is:exegesis \ek-suh-JEE-sis\ noun: exposition, explanation; especially : an explanation or critical interpretation of a textExamples:"He has … a real gift for _exegesis_, unpacking poems in language that is nearly as eloquent as the poet's, and as clear as faithfulness allows." — Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 2 May 2016"Every participant was expected to read a passage from his/her holy text. And then, rather than a scholarly interpretation or _exegesis_ rooted in centuries of tradition, they share what they personally understood from it." — Ali R. Cadir, The Houston Chronicle, 22 Oct. 2017Did you know?Theological scholars have long been preoccupied with interpreting the meanings of various passages in the Bible. In fact, because of the sacred status of the Bible in both Judaism and Christianity, biblical interpretation has played a crucial role in both of those religions throughout their histories. English speakers have used the word exegesis—a descendant of the Greek term exēgeisthai, meaning "to explain" or "to interpret"—to refer to explanations of Scripture since the early 17th century. Nowadays, however, academic writers interpret all sorts of texts, and exegesis is no longer associated mainly with the Bible.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 27, 2018 is:tenebrous \TEN-uh-brus\ adjective1 : shut off from the light : dark, murky2 : hard to understand : obscure3 : causing gloomExamples:"Stay close to me," said my brother as we walked through the tenebrous alley alongside the apartment building."HBO's newest critical hit, which … centers on a serial-killer case in a story that unfolds over 17 years, is haunting and tenebrous, with compelling acting, brilliant dialogue and ethereal scenery." — Robert Zullo, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9 Mar. 2014Did you know?Tenebrous means "obscure" or "murky," but there's nothing unclear about its history. Etymologists know that the word derives from the Latin noun tenebrae, which means "darkness." Tenebrous has been used in English since the 15th century, and in the 20th century it was joined by some interesting relations. Tenebrionid is the name of a nocturnal beetle that is usually dark-colored and is also called a darkling beetle. Tenebrism refers to a style of painting—associated with the Italian painter Caravaggio—in which most of the figures are engulfed in shadow but some are dramatically illuminated by concentrated light.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 26, 2018 is:validate \VAL-uh-dayt\ verb1 a : to make legally valid : ratifyb : to grant official sanction to by markingc : to confirm the validity of (an election); also : to declare (a person) elected2 a : to support or corroborate on a sound or authoritative basisb : to recognize, establish, or illustrate the worthiness or legitimacy ofExamples:"Reaching home, I anxiously handed my report card to Mother. Validating my angst, she took it and reached into a battered shoebox containing the report cards of my older sister Tanja." — Charles van der Horst, The Herald-Sun (Durham, North Carolina), 6 Nov. 2017"Recognizing outstanding teachers establishes a culture that rewards excellence in teaching and validates the work of the teacher. It gives students a sense of pride in their teachers, displays teachers as positive role models, and encourages students to think about teaching as a career." — The Yankton (South Dakota) Daily Press & Dakotan, 11 Jan. 2018Did you know?Validate, confirm, corroborate, substantiate, verify, and authenticate all mean to attest to the truth or validity of something. Validate implies establishing validity by authoritative affirmation or factual proof ("a hypothesis validated by experiments"). Confirm implies the removing of doubts by an authoritative statement or indisputable fact ("evidence that confirmed the reports") Corroborate suggests the strengthening of what is already partly established ("witnesses who corroborated the story") Substantiate implies the offering of evidence that sustains the contention ("claims that have yet to be substantiated"). Verify implies the establishing of correspondence of actual facts or details with those proposed or guessed at ("statements that have been verified"). Authenticate implies establishing genuineness by legal or official documents or expert opinion ("handwriting experts who authenticated the diaries").See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 25, 2018 is:ad hoc \AD-HOCK\ adjective1 a : concerned with a particular end or purposeb : formed or used for specific or immediate problems or needs  2 : fashioned from whatever is immediately available : improvisedExamples:"[T]he spread of bike sharing has made millions of lives a bit easier and a bit better…. In more and more realms of life the convenient ad hoc access provided by digital systems is taking the place of the assured access once offered by personal ownership." — The Economist, 23 Dec. 2017"Possible art projects … include a new mural, a music festival or concert series and a sculpture made from a dead tree in Montezuma Park. For each of these projects, the committee members agreed to form a temporary ad hoc committee made up of interested citizens with the expertise to plan them." — Stephanie Alderton, The Journal (Cortez, Colorado), 24 Jan. 2018Did you know?In Latin, ad hoc literally means "for this." That historical meaning is clearly reflected in contemporary English uses of ad hoc—anything that is ad hoc can be thought of as existing "for this purpose only." For example, an "ad hoc committee" is generally authorized to look into a single matter of limited scope, not to pursue any issue of interest. Ad hoc can also be used as an adverb meaning "for the case at hand apart from other applications," as in "a commission created ad hoc." The adverb is older: it has been used in English since the mid-17th century, whereas the adjective did not become part of the language until about the mid-19th century.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 24, 2018 is:caravansary \kair-uh-VAN-suh-ree\ noun1 : an inn surrounding a court in eastern countries where caravans rest at night2 : hotel, innExamples:Most of the area's hotels are on the pricey end of the scale, but there are a few caravansaries for budget travelers."In the town of Ishkashim, adjacent to the market, we visited the crumbling remains of a sixth-century caravansary—an ancient motel for Silk Road travelers." — Andy Isaacson, The New York Times, 20 Dec. 2009Did you know?In the Middle East of centuries past, caravans often lodged at caravansaries. These inns were quadrangular in form and enclosed by massive walls with small windows near the top. The central court, which was surrounded by an arcade and storerooms, was large enough to hold 300 to 400 camels. The name was formed from the word caravan and the Persian word sarāī, meaning "palace" or "inn." Caravansary can also be spelled caravanserai, and the word serai is used as a synonym for it.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 23, 2018 is:meld \MELD\ verb: to blend or mix together : mergeExamples:"Right away you perceive a chorus of instruments—trumpet, piano, saxophone and [vibes](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vibes)—that have acquired the ability _to meld_ their individual voices into a complimentary, unified sound that delights the ears." — Ralph A. Miriello, _The Huffington Post_, 1 Jan. 2018"Formed in Limerick, Ireland, at the end of the 1980s, The Cranberries became international stars in the 1990s with hits including 'Zombie' and 'Linger' that _melded_ alternative rock edge with Celtic-infused pop tunefulness." — _The Associated Press_, 15 Jan. 2018Did you know?As a verb meaning "to blend or merge," _meld_ dates only to the first half of the 20th century. In its early days, the word attracted some unfavorable attention. Those who didn't like it tended to perceive it as a misuse of an older _meld_ meaning "to declare or announce (a card or cards) for a score in a card game" (such as pinochle or gin rummy). But the more recent _meld_, a blend of [_melt_](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/melt) and [_weld_](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weld), was an entirely new coinage suggesting a smooth and thorough blending of two or more things into a single, homogeneous whole. The word is no longer controversial.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 22, 2018 is:plangent \PLAN-junt\ adjective1 : having a loud reverberating sound  2 : having an expressive and especially plaintive qualityExamples:The campers were awoken by the plangent howl of a coyote off in the distance."The music makes for exciting listening and shows Britten's mastery of choral music with each movement a contrast to the next. The movements range from plainsong, to plangent solos, through smooth polyphony and sections with angular rhythms and harmonies." — The Mountain Democrat (Placerville, California), 1 Dec. 2017Did you know?Plangent adds power to our poetry and prose: the pounding of waves, the beat of wings, the tolling of a bell, the throbbing of the human heart, a lover's knocking at the door—all have been described as plangent. The word plangent traces back to the Latin verb plangere, which has two meanings. The first of those meanings, "to strike or beat," was sometimes used by Latin speakers in reference to striking one's breast in grief. This, in turn, led to the verb's second meaning: "to lament." The sense division carried over to the Latin adjective plangens and then into English, giving us the two distinct meanings of plangent: "pounding" and "expressive of melancholy."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 21, 2018 is:demarcate \dih-MAHR-kayt\ verb1 : to fix or define the limits of : delimit2 : to set apart : distinguishExamples:Treaty negotiations are underway, and both parties have agreed to accept whatever boundaries are demarcated in that document."These so-called stelae, some roughly 10 stories high with intricately carved stone, are thought to have demarcated royal burial places." — Marcus Eliason, The Denver Post, 14 Jan. 2018Did you know?Demarcate is set apart by its unique history. Scholars think it may have descended from the Italian verb marcare ("to mark"), which is itself of Germanic origin (the Old High German word for boundary, marha, is a relative). Marcare is the probable source of the Spanish marcar (also "to mark"), from which comes the Spanish demarcar ("to fix the boundary of"). In 1494, a Spanish noun, demarcación, was used to name the meridian dividing New World territory between Spain and Portugal. Later (about 1730), English speakers began calling this boundary the "line of demarcation," and eventually we began applying that phrase to other dividing lines as well. Demarcation, in turn, gave rise to demarcate in the early 19th century.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 20, 2018 is:refection \rih-FEK-shun\ noun1 : refreshment of mind, spirit, or body; especially : nourishment2 a : the taking of refreshmentb : food and drink together : repastExamples:"… I should prefer that even in the 'Children's Houses' which are situated in tenements and from which little ones, being at home, can go up to eat with the family, school refection should be instituted." — Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method, 1912"The transparency of the venue is a testament to its promise of offering 'fresh and healthy' choices—being able to intimately view the process of preparation and see the fresh ingredients used to concoct your food will make you feel reassured that you'll be biting into a crisp, original, unprocessed refection." — Vasudha Diojode, The Daily Californian (University of California, Berkeley), 19 June 2014Did you know?Whether you sit down for nourishment or sustenance, aliment or pabulum, a meal or a repast, you are unlikely to encounter a shortage of English words for food or the partaking of food. Refection is just such a word. It was first borrowed by Middle English (as refeccioun) from Anglo-French refectiun, which in turn was derived from Latin refectio (meaning "refreshment" or "repairing"). Refectio comes from the verb reficere ("to remake, renew, or restore"), a combination of the prefix re- ("again") and the verb facere ("to make or do"). Refection is not only applied to food, however. It has been used to describe many means of restoring or refreshing one's body, and of mental and spiritual sustenance as well.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 19, 2018 is:sanguine \SANG-gwun\ adjective1 : bloodred2 a : consisting of or relating to bloodb : bloodthirsty, sanguinaryc : ruddy3 : having blood as the predominating bodily humor; also : having the bodily conformation and temperament held characteristic of such predominance and marked by sturdiness, ruddy color, and cheerfulness4 : confident, optimisticExamples:The coach insisted that he was sanguine about his team's chances in the playoffs, even though his star player was injured."Some of us hear the term AI [artificial intelligence] and picture a dystopian future where people lose jobs and control to robots who possess artificial—and superior—intelligence to human beings. Others are more sanguine about our ability to control and harness technology to achieve more and greater things." — Georgene Huang, Forbes, 27 Sept. 2017Did you know?If you're the sort of cheery soul who always looks on the bright side no matter what happens, you have a sanguine personality. Sanguine describes one of the temperaments that ancient and medieval scholars believed was caused by an abundance of one of the four humors (another is phlegmatic, an adjective that describes the calm, cool, and collected among us). The word sanguine derives from sanguineus, Latin for "blood" or "bloody," and over the more than 600 years it's been in use it has had meanings ranging from "bloodthirsty" and "bloodred" to today's most common one, "confident, optimistic."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 18, 2018 is:panegyric \pan-uh-JEER-ik\ noun: a eulogistic oration or writing; also : formal or elaborate praiseExamples:The club's president opened the awards ceremony with a touching panegyric for several prominent members who had passed away during the last year."At Lafayette College in Northampton County in 2007, he marked the 250th anniversary of the Marquis de Lafayette's birthday with a panegyric to the great statesman and France's broader influence on America." — Joe Smydo, The Daily Telegram (Adrian, Michigan), 25 May 2017Did you know?On certain fixed dates throughout the year, the ancient Greeks would come together for religious meetings. Such gatherings could range from hometown affairs to great national assemblies, but large or small, the meeting was called a panēgyris. That name comes from pan, meaning "all," and agyris, meaning "assembly." At those assemblies, speakers provided the main entertainment, and they delivered glowing orations extolling the praises of present civic leaders and reliving the past glories of Greek cities. To the Greeks, those laudatory speeches were panēgyrikos, which means "of or for a panēgyris." Latin speakers ultimately transformed panēgyrikos into the noun panegyricus, and English speakers adapted that Latin term to form panegyric.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 17, 2018 is:biddable \BID-uh-bul\ adjective1 : easily led, taught, or controlled : docile2 : capable of being bidExamples:"Unfailingly sweet and biddable (he never put his teeth on another creature—not even when he was bitten on the snout by a friend's ten-week-old puppy), we almost doubted his full canine credentials. No pack instincts? No resource guarding? No." — Mona Charen, The National Review, 23 Nov. 2016"Because of the lack of documentation, the audit couldn't directly determine whether the project met a goal of awarding 60 percent of the biddable work to local firms, and 20 percent to small businesses." — Ben van der Meer, The Sacramento Business Journal, 5 Dec. 2017Did you know?A biddable individual is someone you can issue an order to—that is, someone who will do your bidding. The word dates to the late 18th century, and currently our earliest evidence for it is a quote in the Scottish National Dictionary. There are a number of words in English that do what biddable does. Tractable, amenable, and docile are three of them. Biddable is often applied to children and indicates a ready, constant inclination to follow orders, requests, and suggestions. Tractable suggests characteristics that make for easy guiding, leading, ordering, or managing; its antonym intractable (as in "intractable problems") is more common. Amenable indicates a disposition to be agreeable or complaisant as well as a lack of assertive independence. Docile can stress a disposition to submit, either due to guidance and control or to imposition and oppression.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 16, 2018 is:yuppify \YUP-uh-fye\ verb: to make appealing to yuppies; also : to infuse with the qualities or values of yuppiesExamples:My sister rents an expensive apartment in a neighborhood that was recently yuppified."In those days, Surry Hills was a working-class suburb, and while its northern edges have been yuppified, the southern end around Cleveland Street maintains a vestige of the old feel." — Ean Higgins, The Australian, 31 July 2017See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 15, 2018 is:nebbish \NEB-ish\ noun: a timid, meek, or ineffectual personExamples:Lyle may have come across as a nebbish, but he stood up to the bully who gave him a hard time—and the students in the cafeteria who witnessed the confrontation showed their support."Arthur Darvill is known to 'Doctor Who' fans as the nebbish-turned-stalwart-hero Rory Williams and to CW superhero fans as Rip Hunter, organizer of the 'Legends of Tomorrow' on that series." — Mike Suchcicki, The Pensacola (Florida) News Journal, 26 Nov. 2017Did you know?"From what I read ... it looks like Pa isn't anything like the nebbish Ma is always making him out to be…." Sounds like poor Pa got a bum rap, at least according to a 1951 book review that appeared in The New York Times. The unfortunate Pa unwittingly demonstrates much about the etymology of nebbish, which derives from the Yiddish nebekh, meaning "poor" or "unfortunate." As you might expect for a timid word like nebbish, the journey from Yiddish to English wasn't accomplished in a single bold leap of spelling and meaning. It originally entered English in the 1800s as the adjective nebbich, meaning "innocuous or ineffectual." Nebbich (sometimes spelled nebekh) has also been used as an interjection to express dismay, pity, sympathy, or regret, but that use is far less widespread and is not included in most general-use English dictionaries.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 14, 2018 is:frolic \FRAH-lik\ verb1 : to amuse oneself : make merry2 : to play and run about happily : rompExamples:"Every year, Trolley Dances takes us on a unique journey.… Audiences are introduced to new, site-specific dance performances at stops along the trolley line…. In years past, for instance, dancers have frolicked in public fountains, executed seductive tango moves in a narrow alley and rolled down grassy slopes." — Marcia Manna, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 27 Sept. 2017"When we ask our viewers to send us photos of the snow, we always get the usual—kids, dogs, porches—but this year, one viewer stepped it up a notch. Oak Island resident Wendy Brumagin was able to capture a beautiful, and what some might consider rare, image of a coyote frolicking in the snow." — _ABC11.com_ (Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina), 8 Jan. 2018Did you know?Frolic is a playful word with a happy history. It traces back to the Dutch word vroolijk ("merry"), which in turn evolved from a Middle Dutch combination of vro ("happy") and the adjectival suffix -lijc ("-ly"). Vro is related to the Old Frisian and Old High German fro, which also means "happy." (It is also a distant relative of Old English frogga, from which Modern English derived frog.) When frolic first entered English in the early-mid 16th century, it was used as an adjective meaning "merry" or "full of fun." The verb came into use by the end of that century, followed a few decades later by a noun use, as in "an evening of fun and frolic."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 13, 2018 is:nuts \NUTS\ adjective1 : enthusiastic, keen2 : insane, crazyExamples:"On Friday nights, when my kids … were younger, we would sit and watch a film. It's a fantastic feeling when you see them getting drawn into something you love. My husband, Phil, and I are nuts about West Wing, and we've gradually got my son into that as well." — Rebecca Front, quoted in Good Housekeeping (UK), April 2016"I think the most irresponsible thing I did was invest in a company that was going nowhere.… It kept falling apart. People kept telling me I was nuts. I kept pushing forward." — Jessica Alba, quoted in Cosmopolitan, 1 Mar. 2016Did you know?The informal adjective nuts dates to the early 1900s but developed from an earlier 17th-century slang meaning often found in phrases like "nuts to me" and "nuts for me," where it referred to a source of delight, as in this quote from English satirist Jonathan Swift's A Journal to Stella (1766): "Why, we had not one word of quarrel; only he railed at me when I was gone: and Lord Keeper and Treasurer teased me for a week. It was nuts to them; a serious thing with a vengeance." The use likely had something to do with the taste of the dry fruit or seed since early figurative examples of the noun include the expression "nuts and cheese." Adjectival use, typically describing enthusiasm about or fondness for someone or something came about in the late 18th century. In Britain, the term was often used in the phrase "dead nuts on," as "She is dead nuts on the boy next door." The notion that enthusiasm and infatuation often lead to obsession may have played a role in the early 20th-century senses of nuts denoting extreme devotion, as in "nuts about baseball," and functioning as a synonym of "insane."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 12, 2018 is:adust \uh-DUST\ adjective: scorched, burnedExamples:The adust landscape of volcanic rock and sand can be particularly beautiful at sunset."These arid and adust creatures, looking like the mummies of some antediluvian animals, … had to all appearance come out from this long tempest of trial unscathed and unharmed." — Thomas De Quincey, Revolt of the Tartars, 1837Did you know?Adust comes from Latin adustus, the past participle of adūrere ("to set fire to"), a verb formed from the Latin prefix ad- and the verb ūrere ("to burn"). It entered the English language in the early 15th century as a medical term related to the four bodily humors—black bile, blood, phlegm, and yellow bile—which were believed at the time to determine a person's health and temperament. Adust was used to describe a condition of the humors in which they supposedly became heated or combusted. Adust black bile in particular was believed to be a source of melancholy. The association with melancholy gave rise to a sense of adust meaning "of a gloomy appearance or disposition," but that sense is now considered archaic.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 11, 2018 is:recuse \rih-KYOOZ\ verb: to disqualify (oneself) as judge in a particular case; broadly : to remove (oneself) from participation to avoid a conflict of interestExamples:Because she was a frequent customer at the plaintiff's shop, the judge recused herself from the case."If HB 1225 becomes law in its current form, any county official who has an agreement with a wind developer must recuse himself or herself from any matter that involves the ownership, operation, construction or location of a wind power device in the county." — Travis Weik, The Courier-Times (New Castle, Indiana), 14 Jan. 2018Did you know?Recuse is derived from the Middle French word recuser, which comes from the Latin recusare, meaning "to refuse." English speakers began using recuse with the meaning "to refuse or reject" in the 14th century. By the 15th century, the term had acquired the meaning "to challenge or object to (a judge)." The current legal use of recuse as a term specifically meaning "to disqualify (oneself) as a judge" didn't come into frequent use until the 19th century. Broader applications soon followed from this sense—you can now recuse yourself from such things as debates and decisions as well as court cases.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 10, 2018 is:instauration \in-staw-RAY-shun\ noun1 : restoration after decay, lapse, or dilapidation2 : an act of instituting or establishing somethingExamples:"Once, humanity dreamed of the great instauration—a rebirth of ancient wisdom that would compel us into a New Age…." — Knute Berger, Seattle Weekly, 14 Dec. 2005"Showing that we can set quantifiable and therefore measurable standards for a program's performance does indeed make possible the instauration of market dynamics with respect to outcomes for our students and for society at large." — Carlos J. Alonso, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 Dec. 2010Did you know?Instauration first appeared in English in the early 16th century, a product of the Latin verb instaurare, meaning "to renew or restore." This same source gave us our verb store, by way of Middle English and Anglo-French. After instauration broke into English, the philosopher Francis Bacon began writing his Instauratio Magna, which translates to The Great Instauration. This uncompleted collection of works, which was written in Latin, calls for a restoration to a state of paradise on earth, but one in which humankind is enlightened by knowledge and truth.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 9, 2018 is:mnemonic \nih-MAH-nik\ adjective1 : assisting or intended to assist memory; also : of or relating to a technique of improving the memory2 : of or relating to memoryExamples:James taught his students the mnemonic sentence "King Philip Came Over For Good Spaghetti" to help them remember the levels of biological classification (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species)."Let's illustrate this point with a simple exercise using the elementary school mnemonic 'Every Good Boy Deserves Fun.' Teachers use this tool to help students learn the letters of the musical staff: EGBDF." — Richard Klasco and Lewis H. Glinert, The Washington Post, 14 Jan. 2018Did you know?The word mnemonic derives from the Greek mnēmōn ("mindful"), which itself comes from the verb mimnēskesthai, meaning "to remember." (In classical mythology, Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, is the goddess of memory.) In addition to its adjectival use, mnemonic is also a noun meaning "a mnemonic device," and the plural from mnemonics is used in the sense of "a technique of improving the memory." As with many classical borrowings, we retained the double initial consonant, but not the pronunciation of both, since the combination doesn't occur naturally in English (pneumonia is a similar case). If this spelling strikes you as particularly fiendish to remember, keep this mnemonic in mind: although the word's pronunciation begins with an n sound, the spelling begins with an m, as in memory.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 8, 2018 is:embargo \im-BAHR-goh\ noun1 : an order of a government prohibiting the departure of commercial ships from its ports2 : a legal prohibition on commerce3 : stoppage, impediment; especially : prohibition4 : an order by a common carrier or public regulatory agency prohibiting or restricting freight transportationExamples:"The embargo has forced freight companies to find new routes. Indian food suppliers, for example, used to make a stop in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Now they fly their products on cargo planes direct to Qatar." — Zahraa Alkhalisi, CNN Money, 23 June 2017"The Trump administration … tightened the economic embargo on Cuba, restricting Americans from access to hotels, stores and other businesses tied to the Cuban military." — Gardiner Harris, The New York Times, 8 Nov. 2017Did you know?Embargoes may be put in place for any number of reasons. For instance, a government may place a trade embargo against another country to express its disapproval with that country's policies. But governments are not the only bodies that can place embargoes. A publisher, for example, could place an embargo on a highly anticipated book to prevent stores from selling it before its official release date. The word embargo, dating from around the year 1600, derives via Spanish embargar from Vulgar Latin imbarricare, formed from the prefix im- and the noun barra ("bar").See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 7, 2018 is:carp \KAHRP\ verb: to find fault or complain querulouslyExamples:"The play begins in 1619, three years after his death, when a few of his former colleagues are carping about the pirated versions of his plays now cluttering London stages and bookstalls." — Alexis Soloski, The New York Times, 25 July 2017"Cynthia began her work day with a contentious discussion involving a contract dispute.... From there she went right into a staff meeting where a number of her employees carped about minor operational issues as if they were monumental. At various junctures, she found herself holding her breath and gritting her teeth." — Philip Chard, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 25 June 2017Did you know?You might guess that today's word is a descendant of the noun carp, referring to a type of fish. That's a reasonable speculation, but the words are unrelated. Both entered the English language in the 15th century but from different sources. Whereas the fish's name traces back to Latin carpa, the verb is of Scandinavian origin: it may be related to the Icelandic verb karpa, meaning "to dispute" or "to wrangle," and beyond that perhaps to Old Norse karp, meaning "boasting" or "arrogance." There is a noun carp that is related to the Scandinavian verb, however: it means "complaint," and it dates to that same century.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 6, 2018 is:logomachy \loh-GAH-muh-kee\ noun1 : a dispute over or about words2 : a controversy marked by verbiageExamples:"All politics is local, and that goes double for school politics. But just what does 'local' mean? Georgians are going to have an argument about that word between now and the November referendum on the proposed Opportunity School District. A great logomachy over localism, if you like." — Kyle Wingfield, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11 Sept. 2016"Not that anyone could accuse this city of lacking logophiles—that's 'lovers of words,' if you have to ask. But where could word warriors go to engage in spirited logomachy?" — Ron Fletcher, The Boston Globe, 29 Apr. 2007Did you know?It doesn't take much to start people arguing about words, but there's no quarrel about the origin of logomachy. It comes from the Greek roots logos, meaning "word" or "speech," and machesthai, meaning "to fight," and it entered English in the mid-1500s. If you're a word enthusiast, you probably know that logos is the root of many English words (monologue, neologism, logic, and most words ending in -logy, for example), but what about other derivatives of machesthai? Actually, this is a tough one even for word whizzes. Only a few very rare English words come from machesthai. Here are two of them: heresimach ("an active opponent of heresy and heretics") and naumachia ("an ancient Roman spectacle representing a naval battle").See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 5, 2018 is:spavined \SPAV-ind\ adjective1 : affected with swelling2 : old and decrepit : over-the-hillExamples:The team is sadly spavined, and the new coaching staff will have to look to rebuild over the next couple of seasons."Large and medium-sized canvases in varying stages of completion covered most of the wall space in the studio, a long, windowless room that was once an auto-body shop, and the floor was a palimpsest of rags, used paper palettes, brushes, spavined art books, … and other debris." — Calvin Tomkins and Dodie Kazanjian, The New Yorker, 10 Apr. 2017Did you know?"His horse [is] … troubled with the lampas, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins...." Petruchio's poor, decrepit horse in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is beset by just about every known equine malady, including a kind of swelling in the mouth (lampas), skin lesions (fashions), tumors on his fetlocks (windgalls), and bony enlargements on his hocks (spavins). The spavins alone can be enough to render a horse lame and useless. In the 17th century, "spavined" horses brought to mind other things that are obsolete, out-of-date, or long past their prime, and we began using the adjective figuratively. Spavined still serves a purpose, despite its age. It originated in Middle English as spaveyned and can be traced to the Middle French word for spavin, which was espavain.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 4, 2018 is:blench \BLENCH\ verb: to draw back or turn aside from lack of courage : flinchExamples:"I blenched when my son first introduced me to the initials IRL, meaning In Real Life, as opposed to the online world where he and his generation spend so much of their time." — Allison Pearson, The Daily Telegraph (London), 26 Apr. 2017"If you're a responsible teacher, you talk to your students about money. You say: most novelists earn around £5,000 a year from their writing. You watch them blench. You say: so if you're going to do this, you have to think about how you're going to support yourself." — Naomi Alderman, quoted in The Guardian, 15 Mar. 2014Did you know?If a stranger approaches you in a dark alley, it might cause you to blench. Do you flinch or turn white? Actually, you could do both, and both would be considered blenching because there are two separate verbs spelled "blench" in English. The blench that means "to flinch" derives from blencan, an Old English word meaning "to deceive." The blench meaning "to turn white" is an alteration of blanch, from the French adjective blanc ("white"). Clues to which meaning is intended can often be found in context. The "flinch" use, for example, is strictly intransitive and often followed by from or at ("blenched from the sight of blood"; "didn’t blench at the sound of thunder"). The "whiten" use, meanwhile, can be intransitive ("his skin blenched with terror") or transitive ("the cold blenched her lips").See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 3, 2018 is:tucket \TUCK-ut\ noun: a fanfare on a trumpetExamples:"By this time the tucket was sounding cheerily in the morning, and from all sides Sir Daniel's men poured into the main street and formed before the inn." — Robert Louis Stevenson, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, 1888"… Leonard Bernstein came on to lead a thunderous performance of 'Fanfare for the Common Man,' a series of ear-blasting tuckets and bass-drum explosions that Mr. Copland wrote in 1943...." — Donal Henahan, The New York Times, 15 Nov. 1985Did you know?Tucket can be found most notably in the stage directions of several of William Shakespeare's plays. In King Lear, for example, a tucket sounds to alert the Earl of Gloucester of the arrival of the Duke of Cornwall (Act II, Scene i). The word tucket likely derives from the obsolete English verb tuk, meaning "to beat the drum" or "to sound the trumpet." These days, the word fanfare itself refers to a sounding of trumpets made, for example, in celebration or to alert one of another's arrival. The presence of fanfare might be the reason that tucket is rarely used in contemporary English.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 2, 2018 is:divest \dye-VEST\ verb1 a : to deprive or dispossess especially of property, authority, or titleb : to undress or strip especially of clothing, ornament, or equipmentc : rid, free2 : to take away from a personExamples:The court's ruling does not divest the family of their ability to use the property."A news release went out from Governor Andrew Cuomo's office, saying that New York was going to divest its vast pension-fund investments in fossil fuels." — Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, 21 Dec. 2017Did you know?Divest is one of many English words that come from the Latin verb vestire ("to clothe") and ultimately from the noun vestis ("clothing, garment"). Others include vest, vestment, invest, and travesty. Divest and its older form devest can mean "to unclothe" or "to remove the clothing of," but the word had broader applications even when it was first being used in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the opening scene of Shakespeare's King Lear, Lear uses the term to mean "rid oneself of" or "put aside":  "Tell me, my daughters  (Since now we will divest us both of rule,  Interest of territory, cares of state),  Which of you shall we say doth love us most?"In addition to clothing, one can be divested of power, authority, possessions, or burdens.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 1, 2018 is:preternatural \pree-ter-NATCH-uh-rul\ adjective1 : existing outside of nature2 : exceeding what is natural or regular : extraordinary3 : inexplicable by ordinary means; especially : psychicExamples:"[Steven] Spielberg has ridden his preternatural talent to a career that has brought in nearly $10 billion at the box office, around $3 billion more than his nearest competitor. He's the ideal of a Hollywood director." — Ryan Bort, Newsweek, 29 Sept. 2017"He has an almost preternatural emotional intelligence; when we meet for the second time I give him a hug, and he calls me out on it: 'What's up with that hug? That didn't have any feeling! Where's my hug?'" — Allison Samuels, Wired, February 2017Did you know?Preternatural derives from the Latin phrase praeter naturam, which means "beyond nature." Medieval Latin scholars rendered the term as praeternaturalis, and that form inspired the modern English version. Unusual things are sometimes considered positive and sometimes negative, and throughout its history preternatural has been used to refer to both exceptionally good things and unnaturally evil ones. In its earliest documented uses in the 1500s, it tended to emphasize the strange, ominous, or foreboding, but by the 1700s, people were using it more benignly to refer to fascinating supernatural (or even heavenly) phenomena. Nowadays, people regularly use it to describe the remarkable abilities of exceptional humans.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 31, 2018 is:irrupt \ih-RUPT\ verb1 : to rush in forcibly or violently2 : (of a natural population) to undergo a sudden upsurge in numbers especially when natural ecological balances and checks are disturbed3 : to become active or violent especially suddenly : eruptExamples:"Montaigne was attuned to the kind of 'involuntary' memory that would one day fascinate Proust: those blasts from the past that irrupt unexpectedly into the present, perhaps in response to a long-forgotten taste or smell." — Sarah Bakewell, How to Live, 2010"Purple finches and pine siskins both are expected to irrupt southward due to poor cone crops in the Northeast and Canada." — James McCarthy, Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 3 Oct. 2016Did you know?Irrupt and erupt have existed side-by-side since the former entered the English language in the 1800s erupt had been a part of the language for over two centuries at that point). Both are descendants of the Latin verb rumpere, which means "to break," but irrupt has affixed to it the prefix ir- (in the sense "into") while erupt begins with the prefix e- (meaning "out"). So "to irrupt" was originally to rush in, and "to erupt" was to burst out. But it's sometimes hard to distinguish the precise direction of a violent rush, and irrupt came to be used as a synonym of erupt in the senses "to become active or violent especially suddenly" and "to break forth."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 30, 2018 is:tincture \TINK-cher\ noun1 : a solution of a medicinal substance in an alcoholic solvent2 a : a characteristic quality : castb : a slight admixture : trace3 : color, tint4 : a heraldic metal, color, or furExamples:"You can find turmeric in powder culinary spice form and in its whole root form, as well as in tincture, tablets, and capsules." — Aly Walansky, PopSugar, 21 Dec. 2017"Yet, while there is nothing Roth despises more than the cheap turn of 'consolation'—the moments in a play or a book where everyone discovers love and feels better—the real arc of Roth's career, as he presents it here, has a tincture of hope." — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 13 Nov. 2017Did you know?Tincture derives from the same root as tint and tinge—the Latin verb tingere, meaning "to moisten or dip." Tincture specifically derives via Middle English from the Latin tinctus, the past participle of tingere. When the word first appeared in English in the 14th century, tincture referred to a coloring matter or dye, but by the 17th century the word had acquired a number of additional meanings, including "a slight infusion or trace of something." Tinge and shade are two other words referring to color that can be used the same way. Tincture can also refer, among other things, to the colors used in a coat of arms or an herbal or medicinal solution.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 29, 2018 is:anthropomorphic \an-thruh-puh-MOR-fik\ adjective1 : described or thought of as having a human form or human attributes2 : ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman thingsExamples:"This animated … comedy, about a depressed horse living among other anthropomorphic animals in a version of Hollywood, somehow explores the depth of human emotion in a way that few other shows do." — Bethonie Butler, The Washington Post, 10 Dec. 2017"The program sees the magical anthropomorphic bear Brigsby doing battle with an evil wizard in the moon while also teaching multiplication." — David Sims, The Atlantic, 28 July 2017Did you know?Anthropomorphic comes from the Late Latin word anthropomorphus, which itself traces to a Greek term birthed from the roots anthrōp- (meaning "human being") and -morphos (-morphous). Those ancient Greek roots have given form and personality to many English words. Anthrōp- relatives include anthropic ("relating to human beings or the period of their existence on earth"), anthropocentric ("interpreting or regarding the world in terms of human values and experiences"), anthropoid ("an ape"), and anthropology ("the study of human beings and their ancestors"). Derivatives of -morphos often end in -morphism, as in polymorphism ("the quality or state of existing in or assuming different forms"), or -morphic, as in biomorphic ("resembling the forms of living organisms").See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 28, 2018 is:popinjay \PAH-pin-jay\ noun: a strutting supercilious personExamples:"Who does that guy think he is?" Amanda asked in regard to the popinjay who strolled into the restaurant demanding to be seated instantly."[Ryan] Gosling plays the motormouthed popinjay, a tough talker who's actually quite skittish about his bloody job." — Sean P. Means, The Salt Lake Tribune, 23 May 2016Did you know?Popinjays and parrots are birds of a feather. Popinjay, from the Middle French word papegai, is the original name for a parrot in English. The French word, in turn, came from the Arabic word for the bird, babghā’. Parrot, which English speakers adopted later, is probably a modification of the Middle French perroquet, which is also the source of the English parakeet. In the days of Middle English, parrots were rare and exotic, and it was quite a compliment to be called a popinjay after such a beautiful bird. But by the 1500s, parrots had become more commonplace, and their gaudy plumage and vulgar mimicry helped popinjay develop the pejorative sense we use today.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 27, 2018 is:nebulous \NEB-yuh-lus\ adjective1 : of, relating to, or resembling a nebula2 : indistinct, vagueExamples:"There's nothing quite like a literary trilogy. As a reader, there's something wonderful about seeing a story unfold over the course of three books; you get more detailed narrative than in a single book without having to deal with the nebulous endpoint of an ongoing series." — Allen Adams, The Maine Edge, 6 Dec. 2017"Americans love the circus because it has the rare ability to invoke the real memories of one's first childhood visit coupled with the nebulous cultural nostalgia of circus parades, mustachioed ringmasters and the assembled curiosities of a world made wide before one's eyes." — Tim Baker, Newsweek.com, 19 Dec. 2017Did you know?Nebulous comes from the Latin word nebulosus, meaning "misty," which in turn comes from nebula, meaning "mist," "fog," or "cloud." In the 18th century, English speakers borrowed nebula and gave it a somewhat more specific meaning than the Latin version. In English, nebula refers to a cloud of gas or dust in deep space, or in less technical contexts, simply to a galaxy. Nebulous itself, when it doesn't have interstellar implications, usually means "cloudy" or "foggy" in a figurative sense. One's memory of a long-past event, for example, will often be nebulous; a teenager might give a nebulous recounting of an evening's events upon coming home; or a politician might make a campaign promise but give only a nebulous description of how he or she would fulfill it.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 26, 2018 is:retrodict \ret-ruh-DIKT\ verb: to utilize present information or ideas to infer or explain (a past event or state of affairs)Examples:Geologists have retrodicted the positions of the continents millions of years ago."PhD students in my lab are developing new ways to retrodict maize production through time, drawing on tree-ring data for climatic information…." — Tim Kohler, quoted in an article at Laboratoryequipment.com, 7 Aug. 2014Did you know?We predict that you will guess the correct origins of retrodict, and chances are we will not contradict you. English speakers had started using predict by at least the late 16th century; it's a word formed by combining prae- (meaning "before") and dicere (meaning "to say"). Since the rough translation of predict is "to say before," it's no surprise that when people in the early 20th century wanted a word for "predicting" the past, they created it by combining the prefix for "backward" (retro-) with the -dict of predict. Other dicere descendants in English include contradict, benediction, dictate, diction, and dictionary.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 25, 2018 is:mansuetude \MAN-swih-tood\ noun: the quality or state of being gentle : meekness, tamenessExamples:"… he espied over the plateau … the old brown villa itself, rich in memories of one after another of the family of the Antonines. As he approached it, such reminiscences crowded upon him, above all of the life there of the aged Antoninus Pius, in its wonderful mansuetude and calm." — Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurian, 1885"While Barbara was swimming to meet the dawn, Miltoun was bathing in those waters of mansuetude and truth which roll from wall to wall in the British House of Commons." — John Galsworthy, The Patrician, 1911Did you know?Mansuetude was first used in English in the 14th century, and it derives from the Latin verb mansuescere, which means "to tame." Mansuescere itself comes from the noun manus (meaning "hand") and the verb suescere ("to accustom" or "to become accustomed"). Unlike manus, which has many English descendants (including manner, emancipate, and manicure), suescere has only a few English progeny. One of them is desuetude, which means "disuse" and comes to us by way of Latin desuescere ("to become unaccustomed"). Two others are custom and accustom, which derive via Anglo-French from Latin consuescere, meaning "to accustom."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 24, 2018 is:contrite \KAHN-tryte\ adjective: feeling or showing sorrow and remorse for a sin or shortcomingExamples:"… York did in fact say he was sorry and was contrite about making that mistake." — Mark Purdy, The San Jose Mercury News, 1 Jan. 2017"… several lawmakers called for stronger rules that compel companies to meet minimum cybersecurity standards…. But, as in years past, these efforts have yet to produce any new laws. In the meantime, the average person can do little except monitor their credit reports and hope that contrite companies—shamed by security researchers—will learn from their mistakes." — Hayley Tsukayama, The Daily Herald (Everett, Washington), 23 Dec. 2017Did you know?A person who is contrite may have rubbed someone the wrong way and caused bruised feelings—and there is a hint about the origins of the word in that thought. Contrite came to English by way of Anglo-French from the Latin verb conterere, meaning "to grind" or "to bruise." Conterere, in turn, was formed by combining the prefix com-, meaning "with" or "together," and terere, "to rub." If you've guessed that trite is a cousin of contrite (through terere), you are correct. Other terere descendants in English include detriment and very possibly the familiar verb try.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 23, 2018 is:synchronicity \sing-kruh-NISS-uh-tee\ noun1 : the quality or fact of being synchronous2 : the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality — used especially in the psychology of C. G. JungExamples;"Part of the beauty of this set lay in the way Paterson, Sample and Hall functioned as a single rhythmic organism, their long years of partnership evident in the imperturbable synchronicity of their work." — Howard Reich, The Chicago Tribune, 4 Dec. 2017"Nolan always gets wonderful work from his casts and crews, but I'm not sure if I've ever seen this level of flawless synchronicity from start to finish in his films before Dunkirk." — Mark Hughes, Forbes, 21 July 2017Did you know?"It happens to everyone sooner or later: A certain number pops up wherever you go; an old friend you haven't seen in 20 years since high school appears the same day you're looking at her picture in a yearbook; you're singing a song and turn on the radio—and the same song is playing." Such coincidences, here described by Thomas Ropp in The Arizona Republic, March 29,1999, are examples of synchronicity. The concept is linked to the psychology of Carl Jung. Jung didn't coin the word (the "simultaneousness" sense of synchronicity was already in use), but he gave it special importance in his writings. Jung believed that such "meaningful coincidences" play an important role in our lives. Today, some people even look to synchronicities for spiritual guidance.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 22, 2018 is:leonine \LEE-uh-nyne\ adjective: of, relating to, suggestive of, or resembling a lionExamples:"Jamie has a leonine aspect, with a high clear brow and soft curls eddying over his ears and along his collar." — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Harper's, March 2009"You're a kid; you want to escape. Maybe to Edwardian England, maybe to an island of dancing lemurs, maybe through the rear of a magical wardrobe into a land of snow and ice waiting for a leonine king to bring back the sun." — Lawrence Toppman, The Charlotte Observer, 9 Mar. 2017Did you know?Leonine derives from Latin leo, meaning "lion," which in turn comes from Greek leōn. Leōn gave us an interesting range of words: leopard (which derives from leōn combined with pardos, a Greek word for a panther-like animal); dandelion (which came by way of the Anglo-French phrase dent de lion—literally, "lion's tooth"); and chameleon (which combines leōn with the Greek chamai, meaning "on the ground"); as well as the names Leo, Leon, and Leonard. But the dancer's and gymnast's leotard is not named for its wearer's cat-like movements. Rather, it was simply named after its inventor, Jules Leotard, a 19th-century French aerial gymnast.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 21, 2018 is:extenuate \ik-STEN-yuh-wayt\ verb1 : to lessen or to try to lessen the seriousness or extent of by making partial excuses : mitigate2 : to lessen the strength or effect ofExamples:Ryan's tardiness to work that morning was extenuated by the fact that his first meeting of the day was cancelled."If I did any wrong, as I may have done much, I did it in mistaken love, and in my want of wisdom. I write the exact truth. It would avail me nothing to extenuate it now." — Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850Did you know?You have probably encountered the phrase "extenuating circumstances," which is one of the more common ways that this word turns up in modern times. Extenuate was borrowed into English in the late Middle Ages from Latin extenuatus, the past participle of the verb extenuare, which was itself formed by combining ex- and the verb tenuare, meaning "to make thin." In addition to the surviving senses, extenuate once meant "to make light of" and "to make thin or emaciated"; although those senses are now obsolete, the connection to tenuare can be traced somewhat more clearly through them. Extenuate is today mostly at home in technical and legal contexts, but it occasionally appears in general writing with what may be a developing meaning: "to prolong, worsen, or exaggerate." This meaning, which is likely due to a conflation with extend or accentuate (or both), is not yet fully established.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 20, 2018 is:bespoke \bih-SPOHK\ adjective1 : custom-made2 : dealing in or producing custom-made articlesExamples:"Matt, a lifelong collector of vintage and bespoke men's suiting, takes dressing for an occasion very seriously: black tie the first evening; blue jackets the second." — Pilar Guzman, Traveler, December 2017"Customers stepped up for body scans inside the showroom and then worked with an employee to design their own bespoke pullovers." — Anna Wiener, Wired, December 2017Did you know?In the English language of yore, the verb bespeak had various meanings, including "to speak," "to accuse," and "to complain." In the 16th century, bespeak acquired another meaning—"to order or arrange in advance." It is from that sense that we get the adjective bespoke, referring to clothes and other things that are ordered before they are made. You are most likely to encounter this adjective in British contexts, such as the 2008 Reuters news story about a young pig in Northern England who was fitted with "bespoke miniature footwear" (custom-made Wellington boots) to help it overcome a phobia of mud.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 19, 2018 is:trammel \TRAM-ul\ noun1 : something impeding activity, progress, or freedom : restraint — usually used in plural2 : a net for catching birds or fish; especially : trammel netExamples:In her memoir, the singer asserts that her musicianship was ultimately hampered by the trammels of fame."We learn a good deal about [Doc] Holliday: his grief at the passing of his mother when he was a teenager, his early career as an Ivy League-trained dentist, his quickness on the draw, his self-reinvention as an adventurer-wanderer, his yearning to shed the trammels of the conventional life." — Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, 22 Aug. 2001Did you know?A trammel net traditionally has three layers, with the middle one finer-meshed and slack so that fish passing through the first net carry some of the center net through the coarser third net and are trapped. Appropriately, trammel traces back through the Middle English tramayle and the Old French tramail to the Late Latin tremaculum, which comes from Latin tres, meaning "three," and macula, meaning "mesh." Today, the plural trammels is synonymous with restraints, and trammel is also used as a verb meaning "to confine" or "to enmesh." You may also run across the adjective untrammeled, meaning "not confined or limited."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 18, 2018 is:homiletic \hah-muh-LET-ik\ adjective1 : of, relating to, or resembling a homily2 : of or relating to the art of preaching; also : preachyExamples:"The first part is full of homiletic insight, the second replete with postmodern angst, the third quite beautiful in its claim to faith—even the somewhat attenuated faith of our present age." — Paul Lakeland, Commonweal, 23 Apr. 2010"Holbein was wonderfully fresh, but the concept stemmed from a 1280 poem, Le Dit des trois morts et les trois vifs, by Baudoin de Condé. Condé’s concept of a homiletic interchange between feckless living and ghastly dead transmuted swiftly into other languages and pictorial art across Europe." — Derek Turner, The New York Times, 5 Dec. 2017Did you know?Homiletic came to us by way of Latin from Greek homilētikos, meaning "affable" or "social." Homilētikos came from homilein, meaning "to talk with," "to address," or "to make a speech," which in turn came from homilos, the Greek word for "crowd" or "assembly." Homilos and homilein also gave English, by way of Latin homilia and French omelie, the word homily, which is used for a short sermon, a lecture on a moral theme, and an inspirational catchphrase or platitude. Like homily, homiletic focuses on the morally instructive nature of a discourse. Homiletic can also be used derogatorily in the sense of "preachy."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 17, 2018 is:famish \FAM-ish\ verb1 : to cause to suffer severely from hunger2 : to suffer for lack of something necessaryExamples:"At first Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion." — Herman Melville, "Bartleby the Scrivener," 1853"Eating healthy regularly is more important than famishing to shed a few pounds." — Emily Long, The Daily Vidette: Illinois State University, 23 Aug. 2017Did you know?Famish likely developed as an alteration of Middle English famen, meaning "to starve." The Middle English word was borrowed from the Anglo-French verb afamer, which etymologists believe came from Vulgar Latin affamare. We say "believe" because, while no written evidence has yet been found for the Vulgar Latin word affamare, it would be the expected source for the Anglo-French verb based on the combination of the Latin prefix ad- ("to" or "toward") and the root noun fames ("hunger"). In contemporary English, the verb famish is still used on occasion, but it is considerably less common than the related adjective famished, which usually means "hungry" or "starving" but can also mean "needy" or "being in want."See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.