Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 13, 2017 is: microcosm • \MY-kruh-kah-zum\ • noun 1 : a little world; especially : the human race or human nature seen as an epitome of the world or the universe 2 : a community or other unity that is an epitome of a larger unity Examples: "The Mekong River Basin is a microcosm of the Earth's freshwater resources—it includes almost all of the natural forms freshwater takes on Earth: groundwater, lakes, ponds, streams, and wetlands." — Eleanor J. Sterling et al., Natural History, November 2007 "When walking through the district today, you see a microcosm of a city—a businessman walking next to a student, walking next to an artist, walking next to a parishioner—a true urban environment stitched together throughout 19 blocks and 68 acres. You see people of all ages, races, genders, shapes, and sizes living and breathing in the same space, creating a rich identity in and of itself." — Kim Butler, D Magazine, 7 Mar. 2017 Did you know? A microcosm is a "little world"—mikros kosmos in Greek. The Greek term was modified to microcosmus in Medieval Latin. When early medieval scholars referred to humans as miniature embodiments of the natural universe, they either employed the Latin word microcosmus or they used the English translation, "less world." "Man is callyd the lasse worlde, for he shewyth in hymselfe lyknesse of all the worlde," wrote John Trevisa when he translated the Latin text of Bartholomaeus Anglicus' encyclopedia in the 14th century. But by the 15th century scholars had adopted an anglicized version of the Latin word, the word we use today—microcosm. 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 May 12, 2017 is: grok • \GRAHK\ • verb : to understand profoundly and intuitively Examples: "Understanding your character is as important as the lines. If you don't believe you are someone different, how will anyone else believe you? You must grok the role—or at least try." — Joseph Garcia, quoted in The Orange County (California) Register, 1 June 2014 "The Chronicle asked several insurance experts to read through the policy, which is written in impenetrable insurance-ese that makes it pretty hard for civilians to grok." — Carolyn Said, The San Francisco Chronicle, 27 Mar. 2014 Did you know? Grok may be the only English word that derives from Martian. Yes, we do mean the language of the planet Mars. No, we're not getting spacey; we've just ventured into the realm of science fiction. Grok was introduced in Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. The book's main character, Valentine Michael Smith, is a Martian-raised human who comes to earth as an adult, bringing with him words from his native tongue and a unique perspective on the strange ways of earthlings. Grok was quickly adopted by the youth culture of America and has since peppered the vernacular of those who grok 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 May 11, 2017 is: supposititious • \suh-pah-zuh-TISH-us\ • adjective 1 a : fraudulently substituted : spurious b : (of a child) falsely presented as a genuine heir : illegitimate 2 a : imaginary b : of the nature of or based on a supposition : hypothetical Examples: "… James II's queen, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son and heir, the future Old Pretender, whom William's supporters tried to discredit as a supposititious child, smuggled in via a warming-pan." — Keith Thomas, The Guardian, 5 Apr. 2008 "I sat looking at Peggotty for some time, in a reverie on this supposititious case: whether, if she were employed to lose me like the boy in the fairy tale, I should be able to track my way home again by the buttons she would shed." — Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850 Did you know? The Latin verb supponere, meaning "substitute," has several legitimate heirs in English, including supposititious (which dates from the early 17th century) and supposition (a 15th-century addition). The "fraudulent" and "illegitimate" meanings of supposititious trace back to supponere in a fairly direct route, whereas the "imaginary" and "hypothetical" meanings were influenced by the meanings of supposition. In legal contexts, supposititious is primarily used in its earlier senses, as in "a supposititious (fraudulent) will" or "the child was supposititious (illegitimate)." When something hypothetical is being considered, the synonymous adjective suppositious is often preferred over supposititious. 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 May 10, 2017 is: erstwhile • \ERST-wile\ • adverb : in the past : formerly Examples: What had erstwhile been acres of wetland was eventually developed into a thriving residential neighborhood. "The participants proceeded with civility and purpose. Meetings that erstwhile had taken entire days were concluded with agreement in an hour or two." — Greg Behrman, The Most Noble Adventure, 2007 Did you know? The adverb erstwhile has been part of English since at least the 16th century, but it is formed from two words that are much older. It comes from the Old English words aer, meaning "early," and hwil, which has the same meaning as the modern word while. (The English word ere, meaning "before," is also a descendant of aer.) These days erstwhile is more likely to be encountered as an adjective, as in "erstwhile enemies." That adjective use is a much more recent development, having joined the language about three centuries after the adverb. 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 May 9, 2017 is: lanuginous • \luh-NOO-juh-nus\ • adjective : covered with down or fine soft hair Examples: At the base of the mullein's tall spire is a cluster of large lanuginous leaves. The scent [of erica, South African heather] is subtle, woody, coniferous—it smells of hot origins. And it's ridiculously tactile: I have to keep prodding the lanuginous bobbles. — Helen Brown, The Independent (UK), 23 Nov. 2006 Did you know? You're likely to come across lanuginous in only a few contexts, botany and spelling bees being the best candidates. In other contexts, the more common term is downy. Lanuginous has an unsurprising pedigree. It's from the Latin word lanuginosus, which is in turn from lanugo, the Latin word for "down." (Lanugo is also an English word used especially to refer to the soft woolly hair that covers the fetus of some mammals.) Lanugo itself is from lana, meaning "wool," a root also at work in lanolin, the term for wool grease that's refined for use in ointments and cosmetics. 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 May 8, 2017 is: panacea • \pan-uh-SEE-uh\ • noun : a remedy for all ills or difficulties : cure-all Examples: Georgette said, "I don't know if hybrid cars are a panacea for the world's environmental issues, but they seem to be a step in the right direction." "… while an uptick in subscriptions is certainly a good thing, it is unlikely to be a panacea for what ails newspapers." — Leonard Pitts, The Miami Herald, 3 Mar. 2017 Did you know? Panacea is from Latin, and the Latin word, in turn, is from Greek panakeia. In Greek, panakēs means "all-healing," combining pan- ("all") and akos, which means "remedy." The Latin designation Panacea or Panaces has been awarded to more than one plant at one time or other, among them the herb today known as Prunella vulgaris, whose common name is self-heal. More often than not, panacea is used when decrying a claim made for a remedy that seems too good to be true. Most likely that's what the author is doing in a 1625 anatomical treatise, describing "a certaine medicine made of saffron, quick silver, vermilion, antimonie, and certaine sea shels made up in fashion of triangular lozenges," and calling it a panacea. 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 May 7, 2017 is: tetchy • \TETCH-ee\ • adjective : irritably or peevishly sensitive : touchy Examples: "What's the use of being cross with this old man? … Seems to me you're getting awful tetchy! Don't you like your old friends any more?" — Booth Tarkington, Alice Adams, 1921 "A million years ago, when written communication between people was limited to emails, I had a policy of always engaging. It took effort to compose an email, and I found even the tetchy ones gratifying. As long as the sender wasn't too obviously insane, I would reply…." — Emma Brockes, The Guardian, 5 Apr. 2017 Did you know? One of the first cited uses of tetchy occurs in William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (1596). Etymologists are not certain how the word came about, but some have suggested that it derives from tetch, an obsolete noun meaning "habit." The similarity both in meaning and pronunciation to touchy might lead you to conclude that tetchy is related to that word, but there is no conclusive evidence to suggest such a connection. The adjectives teched and tetched, meaning "mentally unbalanced," are variations of touched, and are probably also unrelated to tetchy. 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 May 6, 2017 is: demean • \dih-MEEN\ • verb : to conduct or behave (oneself) usually in a proper manner Examples: Theresa was proud of how well her boys demeaned themselves during the ceremony. "He knew that he had been lackadaisical, and was ashamed of himself; and at once resolved that he would henceforth demean himself as though no calamity had happened to him." — Anthony Trollope, The Small House at Allington, 1864 Did you know? There are two words spelled demean in English. The more familiar demean—"to lower in character, status, or reputation"—comes straight from mean, the adjective that means "spiteful." Today's featured word, on the other hand, comes from the Anglo-French verb demener ("to conduct"), which in turn comes from Latin minare, meaning "to drive." This verb has been with us since the 14th century and is generally used in contexts (especially formal ones) specifying a type of behavior: "he demeaned himself in a most unfriendly manner"; "she demeaned herself as befitting her station in life"; "they knew not how to demean themselves in the king's presence." As you may have already guessed, the noun demeanor, meaning "behavior," comes from this demean. 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 May 5, 2017 is: acronym • \AK-ruh-nim\ • noun : a word (such as NATO, radar, or laser) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term; also : an abbreviation (such as FBI) formed from initial letters : initialism Examples: The new committee spent a fair amount of time choosing a name that would lend itself to an appealing acronym. "For now, the Regional Acceleration and Mentoring Program—which goes by the acronym RAMP—looks like an average office space on the third floor of the old Gill Memorial Hospital Building in downtown Roanoke, complete with separate rooms for five companies, shared meeting areas and a kitchen." — Jacob Demmitt, The Roanoke (Virginia) Times, 17 Mar. 2017 Did you know? Acronym was created by combining acr- ("beginning" or "top") with -onym ("name" or "word"). You may recognize -onym in other familiar English words, such as pseudonym and synonym. English speakers borrowed -onym from the Greek onyma ("name") and acr- from the Greek akros (meaning "topmost, extreme"). When acronym first entered English, some usage commentators decreed that it should refer to combinations of initial letters that were pronounced as if they were whole words (such as radar and scuba), differentiated from an initialism, which is spoken by pronouncing the component letters (as in FBI and CEO). These days, however, that distinction is largely lost, and acronym is a common label for both types of abbreviation. 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 May 4, 2017 is: visceral • \VISS-uh-rul\ • adjective 1 : felt in or as if in the internal organs of the body : deep 2 : not intellectual : instinctive, unreasoning 3 : dealing with crude or elemental emotions : earthy 4 : of, relating to, or located on or among the internal organs of the body : splanchnic Examples: "My mom is the only one who still writes me letters. And there's something visceral about opening a letter—I see her on the page. I see her in her handwriting." — Steve Carell, quoted in The Boston Globe Magazine, 24 July 2011 "After months of drama, the gravity of the coming week is hard to grasp and, totally untested, feels strangely abstract. What is tangible, however, is the spitting acrimony and visceral anger that still animate both sides of the Brexit debate." — Louis McEvoy, Cherwell (Oxford University), 25 Feb. 2017 Did you know? The viscera are the internal organs of the body—especially those located in the large cavity of the trunk (e.g., the heart, liver, and intestines). The word viscera comes from Latin, in which it has essentially the same meaning. Something visceral has to do with the viscera, and in a more figurative sense, something visceral is felt "deep down." Even in the early years of its use, visceral often referred to things emotional rather than physiological. For example, in 1640 an English bishop named Edward Reynolds wrote, "Love is of all other the inmost and most visceral affection." This figurative use is the most common use of visceral, but the word continues to be used in medical contexts 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 May 3, 2017 is: refurbish • \rih-FER-bish\ • verb : to brighten or freshen up : renovate Examples: "Ann Eliza noticed that Evelina now took the precaution of putting on her crimson bow every evening before supper, and that she had refurbished with a bit of carefully washed lace the black silk which they still called new because it had been bought a year after Ann Eliza's." — Edith Wharton, Bunner Sisters, 1916 "The company doesn't make jet engines, but it does build and refurbish critical components that protect them and enable them to power aircraft through the skies." — Lawrence Specker, The Mobile (Alabama) Register, 19 Mar. 2017 Did you know? If you're wondering if refurbish implies the existence of an earlier furbish, you are on the right track. Furbish was borrowed into English in the 14th century from Anglo-French furbiss-, a distant relative of Old High German furben, meaning "to polish." In its earliest uses furbish also meant "to polish," but it developed an extended sense of "renovate" shortly before English speakers created refurbish with the same meaning in the 17th century. These days refurbish is the more common of the two words, although furbish does continue to be used. 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 May 2, 2017 is: majordomo • \may-jer-DOH-moh\ • noun 1 : a head steward of a large household (such as a palace) 2 : butler, steward 3 : a person who speaks, makes arrangements, or takes charge for another; broadly : the person who runs an enterprise Examples: "Arriving at the Palace, he was informed that His Highness had gone out shortly after breakfast, and had not returned. The majordomo gave the information with a tinkle of disapproval in his voice." — P. G. Wodehouse, The Prince and Betty, 1912 "When Hinton died, his will transferred half of his interest in the property to Robert Kelly, an Army buddy who was working as Hinton's majordomo at the ranch." — John Cannon, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 22 May 2015 Did you know? Majordomo has relatives in Spanish (mayordomo) and Italian (the now obsolete maiordomo), and English speakers borrowed the term from one of these languages. All three words—majordomo, mayordomo, and maiordomo—ultimately come from the Medieval Latin major domus, meaning "chief of the house." In its earliest uses, majordomo referred to the head steward of a royal household. The position was a high one with some relatively weighty responsibilities. Later, in the U.S., the word was used for the steward or overseer of a ranch. Since then, the word's meaning has extended even further; today, majordomo can designate any person who takes charge of another's affairs, be they business or personal. 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 May 1, 2017 is: fey • \FAY\ • adjective 1 : marked by a foreboding of death or calamity 2 a : marked by an otherworldly air or attitude b : crazy, touched 3 a : excessively refined : precious b : quaintly unconventional : campy Examples: "Often I slipped into one of a few personas I had invented to make myself feel more authentically magical. Sometimes I was Cassandra, a husky-voiced Southern belle who called everyone 'honey child.' Other times I became Gabriel, a fey mystic with an accent that I imagined to be French-ish." — Bennett Madison, The New York Times, 5 Sept. 2016 "What children get is something even better. They get a Batman who isn't invulnerable and who needs his friends. They get a fey, effeminate hero who is every bit as brave and talented as his mentor…." — Louis McEvoy, Cherwell (Oxford University), 25 Feb. 2017 Did you know? Fey is a word that defies its own (original) meaning, since it has yet to even come close to the brink of death after being in our language for well over 800 years. In Old and Middle English it meant "feeble" or "sickly." Those meanings turned out to be fey themselves, but the word lived on in senses related to death, and because a wild or elated state of mind was once believed to portend death, other senses arose from these. The word fay, meaning "fairy" or "elf," may also have had an influence on some senses of fey. Not until the 20th century did the word's most recent meanings, "precious" and "campy," find their way into the 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 April 30, 2017 is: orientate • \OR-ee-un-tayt\ • verb 1 : to set or arrange in a definite position especially in relation to the points of the compass 2 : to acquaint with the existing situation or environment 3 : to direct (as a book or film) toward the interests of a particular group Examples: The program is designed to orientate new students to the college and community. "… the conference's focus was orientated toward the production side of organic farming, which is most beneficial to individual farmers." — Nathan J. Tohtsoni, The Gallup (New Mexico) Independent, 28 Feb. 2017 Did you know? Orientate is a synonym of orient, and it has attracted criticism as a consequence. Orient, which dates from the early 18th century, is in fact the older of the two verbs—orientate joined the language in the mid-19th century. Both can mean "to cause to face toward the east" and, not surprisingly, they are related to the noun Orient, meaning "the East." Both also have broader meanings that relate to setting or determining direction or position, either literally or figuratively. Some critics dislike orientate because it is one syllable longer than orient, but you can decide for yourself how important that consideration is to you. Personal choice is the primary deciding factor, although orientate tends to be used more often in British English than it is in American 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 April 29, 2017 is: lethargic • \luh-THAHR-jik\ • adjective 1 : of, relating to, or characterized by laziness or lack of energy : feeling or affected by lethargy : sluggish 2 : indifferent, apathetic Examples: After eating a large plate of spaghetti and meatballs I often feel lethargic and sleepy. "The cold water temperatures slow down the metabolism of the fish, and they become very lethargic." — Jim Hutchinson, Asbury Park (New Jersey) Press, 9 Mar. 2017 Did you know? In Greek mythology, Lethe was the name of a river in the underworld that was also called "the River of Unmindfulness" or "the River of Forgetfulness." Legend held that when someone died, he or she was given a drink of water from the river Lethe to forget all about his or her past life. Eventually this act of forgetting came to be associated with feelings of sluggishness, inactivity, or indifference. The name of the river and the word lethargic, as well as the related noun lethargy, all derive from lēthē, Greek for "forgetfulness." 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 April 28, 2017 is: slough • \SLUFF\ • verb 1 : to cast off or become cast off 2 : to crumble slowly and fall away 3 : to get rid of or discard as irksome, objectionable, or disadvantageous Examples: "The glue [that affixes the tiling to the hull] is exposed to a wide variety of environmental conditions, including big temperature swings as well as the pressures of operating at 1,000 feet beneath the surface. The friction of moving underwater tugs at the coating, and running into objects contributes to it gradually sloughing off." — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 7 Mar. 2017 "After Monday’s [landslide], the Department of Public Works cut down two trees on the hillside, removed a loose mass of dirt that was unstable and reopened the road. But a significant chunk of the hillside sloughed off in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, with a valley resident alerting people that it had closed as early as 12:30 a.m." — Samantha Kimmey, Point Reyes Light (Marin County, California), 9 Mar. 2017 Did you know? There are two verbs spelled slough in English, as well as two nouns, and both sets have different pronunciations. The first noun, referring to a swamp or a discouraged state of mind, is pronounced to rhyme with either blue or cow; it derives from Old English slōh, which is akin to a Middle High German slouche, meaning "ditch." Its related verb, which can mean "to plod through mud," has the same pronunciation. The second noun, pronounced to rhyme with cuff, refers to the shed skin of a snake (as well as anything else that has been cast off). Its related verb describes the action of shedding or eliminating something, just like a snake sheds its skin. This slough derives from Middle English slughe and is distantly related to slūch, a Middle High German word meaning "snakeskin." 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 April 27, 2017 is: junket • \JUNK-ut\ • noun 1 : a dessert of sweetened flavored milk set with rennet 2 a : a festive social affair b : trip, journey: such as (1) : a trip made by an official at public expense (2) : a promotional trip made at another's expense Examples: The senator is under fire for going on a weeklong lavish junket. "When I was young, … our family often made junkets after church on Sunday, to Cook's, a massive arrangement of barns and sheds near New London. Purveyors of everything from household items to car parts, it … had such buyer appeal that it seemed to be swarming with shoppers every time we stopped in." — The Litchfield (Minnesota) Independent Review, 9 Feb. 2017 Did you know? The road junket has traveled has been a long one, with frequent stops for food along the way. Since at least the 15th century, the word has named various comestibles, ranging from curds and cream to sweet confections. By the 16th century, junket had also come to mean "banquet." Apparently, traveling must have been involved to reach some junkets because eventually the term was also applied to pleasure outings or trips (whether or not food was the focus). Today, the word usually refers either to a trip made by a government official and paid for by the public, or to a free trip by a member of the press to a place where something, such as a new movie, is being promoted. 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 April 26, 2017 is: upbraid • \up-BRAYD\ • verb 1 : to criticize severely : find fault with 2 : to reproach severely : scold vehemently Examples: "A helpful neighbor was able to contact the owner in Dorset and upbraided her for having her house stand empty while a young couple could find no place to live." — Kitty Ferguson, Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind, 2012 "There was a steady stream of customers, mostly for takeout, and the experience was marred only by a guy we took to be the proprietor upbraiding one of his employees in front of the customers. Bad form, sir." — Heidi Knapp Rinella, The Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1 Apr. 2016 Did you know? Upbraid, scold, and berate all mean to reproach angrily, but with slight differences in emphasis. Scold usually implies rebuking in irritation or ill temper, either justly or unjustly. Upbraid tends to suggest censuring on definite and usually justifiable grounds, while berate implies scolding that is prolonged and even abusive. If you're looking for a more colorful term for telling someone off, try tongue-lash, bawl out, chew out, or wig—all of which are fairly close synonyms of berate. Among these synonyms, upbraid is the senior member in English, being older than the others by at least 100 years. Upbraid derives via Middle English from the Old English ūpbregdan, believed to be formed from a prefix meaning "up" and the verb bregdan, meaning "to snatch" or "to move suddenly." 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 April 25, 2017 is: hummock • \HUM-uk\ • noun 1 : a rounded knoll or hillock 2 : a ridge of ice 3 : a fertile area in the southern United States and especially Florida that is usually higher than its surroundings and that is characterized by hardwood vegetation and deep humus-rich soil Examples: "Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose." — Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854 "Relying on a surveying device … Reeder set about measuring minute elevation changes across the land, searching for subtle gradations and anomalies. He zeroed in on a hummock that looked like the earthen side of a bunker, long since overgrown with moss and foliage, and roughly 100 feet away, a telltale dip in the earth." — Matthew Shaer, Smithsonian Magazine, March 2017 Did you know? Hummock first appeared in English in the mid-1500s as an alteration of hammock, another word which can be used for a small hill. This hammock is not related to the hammock we use to refer to a swinging bed made of netting or canvas. That hammock comes from the Spanish hamaca, and ultimately from Taino, a language spoken by the original inhabitants of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas. The origins of the other hammock and the related hummock are still obscure, though we know they share an ancestor with Middle Low German hummel ("small height") and hump ("bump"). The latter of those is also a cousin of the English word hump, another word which can refer to a small hill or hummock. 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 April 24, 2017 is: ambiguous • \am-BIG-yuh-wus\ • adjective 1 a : doubtful or uncertain especially from obscurity or indistinctness b : incapable of being explained, interpreted, or accounted for : inexplicable 2 : capable of being understood in two or more possible senses or ways Examples: "In the app, numbers and symbols are included by default, and ambiguous characters like the digit 0 and capital O are suppressed." — Neil J. Rubenking, PCMag.com, 24 Feb. 2017 "The setting for this story is ambiguous—a girl and her mother leave one country for another to escape an unspecified conflict. The only clue given to the location is the vast ocean separating the two countries, which the refugees must travel by boat." — Anna Fitzpatrick, The Globe and Mail (Canada), 4 Mar. 2017 Did you know? Ambiguous, obscure, vague, equivocal, and cryptic are used to describe writing or speech that is not clearly understandable. Ambiguous applies to language capable of more than one interpretation ("an ambiguous suggestion") and derives from the Latin verb ambigere, meaning "to be undecided." Obscure suggests a hiding or veiling of meaning through some inadequacy of expression or withholding of full knowledge ("obscure poems"). Vague, on the other hand, describes a lack of clear formulation due to inadequate conception or consideration ("a vague sense of obligation"). Equivocal is the best choice for language that creates a wrong or false impression, allowing for uncertainty or promoting mistaken interpretations ("the politician gave an equivocal answer"), and when there is a deliberate attempt to confuse, cryptic can be used ("cryptic clues about the location of the buried treasure"). 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 April 23, 2017 is: factoid • \FAK-toyd\ • noun 1 : an invented fact believed to be true because of its appearance in print 2 : a briefly stated and usually trivial fact Examples: Printed on the back of each baseball card is a chart showing the player's statistics along with one or two interesting factoids about his career. "Diana, the manager, took us through the intricacies of coffee roasting, providing us with interesting factoids such as that lava from the volcanoes results in excellent soil for coffee growing, and the darker the coffee bean, the less caffeine it has." — Patti Nickell, The Lexington (Kentucky) Herald Leader, 17 Feb. 2017 Did you know? We can thank Norman Mailer for the word factoid; he coined the term in his 1973 book Marilyn, about Marilyn Monroe. In the book, Mailer explains that factoids are "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority." Mailer's use of the -oid suffix (which traces back to the ancient Greek word eidos, meaning "appearance" or "form") follows in the pattern of humanoid: just as a humanoid appears to be human but is not, so a factoid appears to be factual but is not. Mailer likely did not appreciate the word's evolution. As current evidence demonstrates, it now most often refers to things that decidedly are facts, just not ones we tend to pay much attention to. 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 April 22, 2017 is: cartographer • \kahr-TAH-gruh-fer\ • noun : one that makes maps Examples: A cartographer was brought in to create new graphical representations of the shoreline that had been reshaped by erosion. "A multi-media interactive website that celebrates the life and times of 16th-century cartographer Martin Waldseemüller—who created the 1507 World Map … —has been unveiled by the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and the Galileo Museum, Florence, Italy." — USA Today, 1 Jan. 2017 Did you know? Up until the 18th century, maps were often decorated with fanciful beasts and monsters, at the expense of accurate details about places. French mapmakers of the 1700s and 1800s encouraged the use of more scientific methods in the art they called cartographie. The French word cartographie (the science of making maps), from which we get our English word cartography, was created from carte, meaning "map," and -graphie, meaning "representation by." Around the same time we adopted cartography in the mid-19th century, we also created our word for a mapmaker, cartographer. 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 April 21, 2017 is: bucolic • \byoo-KAH-lik\ • adjective 1 : of or relating to shepherds or herdsmen : pastoral 2 a : relating to or typical of rural life b : pleasing or picturesque in natural simplicity : idyllic Examples: "My husband, Toby, and I … live on a remote sheep farm in the Cotswold Hills.… Our house perches on the edge of a bucolic valley, its pastures divided by ancient dry-stone walls and hawthorn hedges." — Plum Sykes, Vogue, November 2016 "With acres of tree-shaded paths, outdoor cafés, a lake with rowboats, and several exhibition spaces, the city's grandest park offers a bucolic escape." — Andrew Ferren, Traveler, November 2016 Did you know? We get bucolic from the Latin word bucolicus, which is ultimately from the Greek word boukolos, meaning "cowherd." When bucolic was first used in English as an adjective in the early 17th century, it meant "pastoral" in a narrow sense—that is, it referred to things related to shepherds or herdsmen and in particular to pastoral poetry. Later in the 19th century, it was applied more broadly to things rural or rustic. Bucolic has also been occasionally used as a noun meaning "a pastoral poem" or "a bucolic person." 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 April 20, 2017 is: eighty-six • \ay-tee-SIKS\ • verb : (slang) to refuse to serve (a customer); also : to get rid of : throw out Examples: The bar's policy is that bartenders have both the authority and responsibility to eighty-six customers who disrupt other patrons. "He eighty-sixed the last reform once he was safely re-elected, saying he wanted to give municipalities more time to get ready for the change." — Brian O'Neill, The Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) Post-Gazette, 14 June 2007 Did you know? If you work in a restaurant or bar, you might eighty-six (or "eliminate") a menu item when you run out of it, or you might eighty-six (or "cut off") a customer who should no longer be served. Eighty-six is still used in this specific context, but it has also entered the general language. These days, you don't have to be a worker in a restaurant or bar to eighty-six something—you just have to be someone with something to get rid of or discard. There are many popular but unsubstantiated theories about the origin of eighty-six. The explanation judged most probable by Merriam-Webster etymologists is that the word was created as a rhyming slang word for nix, which means "to veto" or "to reject." 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 April 19, 2017 is: tatterdemalion • \tatt-er-dih-MAIL-yun\ • adjective 1 : ragged or disreputable in appearance 2 : being in a decayed state or condition : dilapidated Examples: "ThreadBanger features episodes about making clothes and other D.I.Y. endeavors that will make you wish you could live life all over again and be a tatterdemalion steampunk kid from San Francisco." — Virginia Heffernan, The New York Times, 21 June 2009 "Layoffs in the refinery, paper mills and brewery that anchored the economy after its shipbuilding and merchant trading days ended have left many striking 19th century buildings of the compact, hilly downtown in a tatterdemalion state but have not torn its welcoming, small-town atmosphere." — Philip Hersh, The Chicago Tribune, 21 Nov. 2014 Did you know? The exact origin of tatterdemalion is uncertain, but it's probably connected to either the noun tatter ("a torn scrap or shred") or the adjective tattered ("ragged" or "wearing ragged clothes"). We do know that tatterdemalion has been used in print since the 1600s. In its first documented use, it was a noun referring to a person in ragged clothing—the type of person we might also call a ragamuffin. (Ragamuffin, incidentally, predates tatterdemalion in this sense. Like tatterdemalion, it may have been formed by combining a known word, rag, with a fanciful ending.) Soon after the first appearance of tatterdemalion, it came to be used as an adjective to describe anything or anyone ragged or disreputable. 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 April 18, 2017 is: grimalkin • \grih-MAWL-kin\ • noun : a domestic cat; especially : an old female cat Examples: The family grimalkin, dreaming, perhaps, of mousing days long past, twitched her tail as she dozed contentedly on the windowsill. "The security-evading feline was caught on camera … on a confectionary shelf, back in November. Now, the grumpy grimalkin has been pictured glaring down at shoppers from above a fridge full of pizzas, garlic bread and ready meals." — Hatty Collier, News Shopper, 7 Jan. 2016 Did you know? In the opening scene of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, one of the three witches planning to meet with Macbeth suddenly announces, "I come, Graymalkin." The witch is responding to the summons of her familiar, or guardian spirit, which is embodied in the form of a cat. Shakespeare's graymalkin literally means "gray cat." The gray is of course the color; the malkin was a nickname for Matilda or Maud that came to be used in dialect as a general name for a cat—and sometimes a hare—and for an untidy woman as well. By the 1630s, graymalkin had been altered to the modern spelling grimalkin. 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 April 17, 2017 is: reciprocate • \rih-SIP-ruh-kayt\ • verb 1 : to give and take mutually 2 : to return in kind or degree 3 : to make a return for something done or given 4 : to move backward and forward alternately Examples: It was kind of Jake to give us a ride to the airport, and we'd like to find a way to reciprocate the favor. "The covenant only works if each partner, as best as possible, puts the other's needs above his or her own, with the understanding that the other will reciprocate." — David Brooks, The New York Times, 7 Mar. 2017 Did you know? Reciprocate, retaliate, requite, and return all mean "to give back," usually in kind or in quantity. Reciprocate implies a mutual or equivalent exchange or a paying back of what one has received ("We reciprocated their hospitality by inviting them to our beach house"). Retaliate usually implies a paying back of an injury or offense in exact kind, often vengefully ("She retaliated by spreading equally nasty rumors about them"). Requite implies a paying back according to one's preference, and often not in an equivalent fashion ("He requited her love with cold indifference"). Return implies simply a paying or giving back ("returned their call" or "return good for evil"). 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 April 16, 2017 is: interminable • \in-TER-muh-nuh-bul\ • adjective : having or seeming to have no end; especially : wearisomely protracted Examples: Hayley didn't think she would have the patience to sit through another interminable radio pledge drive without changing the station at least once. "Garrett Richards' first thought when he found out about his torn elbow ligament in May was to schedule Tommy John surgery as soon as possible.… Richards knew how to handle the seemingly interminable months of rehab, and he wanted to get the clock started on his return." — Jorge L. Ortiz, USA Today, 28 Feb. 2017 Did you know? We promise not to ramble on endlessly about the origins of interminable. The word was borrowed into English in the 15th century and descends from a Latin combination of the prefix in- ("not") and the verb terminare, meaning "to terminate" or "to limit." The word describes not only something without an actual end (or no end in sight, such as "interminable oceans"), but also events, such as tedious lectures, that drag on in such a way that they give no clear indication of ever wrapping up. Other relatives of interminable in English include terminate, determine, terminal, and exterminate. 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 April 15, 2017 is: pittance • \PIT-unss\ • noun : a small portion, amount, or allowance; also : a meager wage or remuneration Examples: "… chances are good that any snow that might fall in coming days could be like the pittance of flakes that fell Thursday—and then almost immediately melted." — Neil Johnson, The Janesville (Wisconsin) Gazette, 11 Mar. 2017 "It's a setup worthy of Sherlock Holmes: a museum acquires a work of art for a pittance, not quite realizing what it has on its hands, only to discover, quite casually, that the piece in question is a long-lost work by a canonical artist." — Kirkus Reviews, 24 Feb. 2017 Did you know? It's a pity when you haven't anything but a pittance. And in fact, pity and pittance share etymological roots. The Middle English word pittance came from Anglo-French pitance, meaning "pity" or "piety." Originally, a pittance was a gift or bequest to a religious community, or a small charitable gift. Ultimately, the word comes from the Latin pietas, meaning "piety" or "compassion." Our words pity and piety come from pietas 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 April 14, 2017 is: magnanimous • \mag-NAN-uh-mus\ • adjective 1 : showing or suggesting a lofty and courageous spirit 2 : showing or suggesting nobility of feeling and generosity of mind Examples: Rather than gloat about her victory in the race, Michelle chose to be magnanimous and congratulated her opponents on their strong showings. "Of course, all TV shows will one day end, and cancellation is part of the business. But similar to its streaming rival Netflix, Amazon has been unusually magnanimous with renewals, granting second and even third seasons to series that haven't exactly captured the cultural conversation…." — Meredith Blake, The Los Angeles Times, 17 Dec. 2016 Did you know? When you see anima, animus, or a similar formation in a word, it's an indicator of something alive, lively, or spirited. Something described as animated is full of life, for example, and the word animal names a living, breathing thing. The Latin word animus means "soul" or "spirit." In magnanimous, that animus is joined by Latin magnus, meaning "great." Basically meaning "greatness of spirit," magnanimity is the opposite of pettiness. A truly magnanimous person can lose without complaining and win without gloating. Angry disputes can sometimes be resolved when one side makes a magnanimous gesture toward another. 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 April 13, 2017 is: napery • \NAY-puh-ree\ • noun : household linen; especially : table linen Examples: The napery was laundered and starched and folded crisply for the next day's brunch guests. "Once upstairs, the sense of a solid, proper steakhouse, with low lighting, a busy bar, tufted chairs and banquettes, and snow-white napery on the tables, is clear and obvious." — Merrill Shindler, The Los Angeles Daily News, 28 Feb. 2017 Did you know? Napery has been used as a fancy word for our household linens, especially those used to cover a table, since the 14th century. The word derives via Middle English from Anglo-French nape, meaning "tablecloth," and ultimately from Latin mappa, "napkin." You can see part of the word napkin in that root; another, much less obvious relative is apron, which was once spelled as napron in Middle English but gradually evolved to its current spelling by way of English speakers habitually misdividing the phrase a napron as an apron. 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 April 12, 2017 is: snaffle • \SNAFF-ul\ • verb : to obtain especially by devious or irregular means Examples: A malicious code discovered in the computer system was designed to snaffle user names and passwords. "A quick-thinking and quick-catching baseball player has avoided a potential disaster in the dugout for his team, as he snaffled a bat careering towards his team." — Wide World of Sports (www.wwos.nine.com.au), 3 Mar. 2017 Did you know? The origins of snaffle are shrouded in mystery. What we know of its story begins in the 16th century. At that time, snaffle existed as both a noun referring to a simple bit for a horse's bridle and a verb meaning "to fit or equip with a snaffle" or "to restrain or check with or as if with a snaffle." The noun could be from an old German word for "mouth," snavel, but the connection has not been confirmed. The "obtain" meaning of the verb appeared in the early 18th century, and its origins are similarly elusive. Not so mysterious is what happened next to the verb: it developed a meaning of "to steal or rob," at least in British dialects. 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 April 11, 2017 is: livelong • \LIV-lawng\ • adjective : whole, entire Examples: The farmhands worked hard all the livelong day and finally fell into their beds, exhausted, well past sundown. "They were part of a research study that showed how standing in the classroom (and not sitting all the livelong day) can help reduce body mass index…." — Leslie Barker, The Dallas Morning News, 30 Aug. 2016 Did you know? "I've been workin' on the railroad, all the livelong day." So goes the American folk standard, and nowadays when we encounter the word livelong, it is typically in the phrase "all the livelong day" or something similar. Although we don't see livelong much in prose anymore, poets still love the word, possibly for its two distinct, alliterative syllables. Despite the resemblance, livelong does not mean the same thing as lifelong (as in "a lifelong friend"). In fact, the words are not closely related: the live in livelong derives from lef, a Middle English word meaning "dear or beloved." 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 April 10, 2017 is: widdershins • \WID-er-shinz\ • adverb : in a left-handed, wrong, or contrary direction : counterclockwise Examples: "Who could fail to be charmed by Korda's account of how he met his wife, Margaret, in Central Park, where they both rode their horses early in the morning, one going clockwise, the other widdershins, until the fateful day when they found themselves going in the same direction …?" — Maxine Kumin, The New York Times Book Review, 22 Apr. 2001 "… I know, however, that you are lying, and nothing can turn me widdershins against the power of my own will." — Elinor Wylie, Mortal Image, 1927 Did you know? English speakers today are most likely to encounter widdershins as a synonym of counterclockwise. But in earliest known uses, found in texts from the early 1500s, widdershins was used more broadly in the sense of "in the wrong way or opposite direction." To say that one's hair "stood widdershins" was, in essence, to say that one was having a bad hair day. By the mid-1500s, English speakers had adopted widdershins to specifically describe movement opposite to the apparent clockwise direction (as seen from the northern hemisphere) of the sun traveling across the sky, which, at the time, could be considered evil or unlucky. The word originates from the Old High German widar, meaning "back" or "against," and sinnen, meaning "to travel." 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 April 9, 2017 is: hyperbole • \hye-PER-buh-lee\ • noun : extravagant exaggeration Examples: "There are those in the organization who believe Bryant might not only be the best receiver on the team, he could be the best in the league. Whether it's true or mere hyperbole is not the point. What it indicates is the immense ability Bryant possesses." — Gerry Dulac, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 19 Feb. 2017 "It's not hyperbole to speculate that there is no director who has had a greater influence on the shape of cinema than Japanese filmmaker [Akira] Kurosawa. He directed 30 films, most of them good to great. 'Seven Samurai,' 'Yojimbo' and 'Rashomon' have been remade and borrowed from more times than can be counted…." — Barbara VanDenburgh, The Arizona Republic, 24 Feb. 2017 Did you know? In the 5th century B.C. there was a rabble-rousing Athenian, a politician named Hyperbolus, who often made exaggerated promises and claims that whipped people into a frenzy. But even though it sounds appropriate, Hyperbolus' name did not play a role in the development of the modern English word hyperbole. That noun does come to us from Greek (by way of Latin), but from the Greek verb hyperballein, meaning "to exceed," not from the name of the Athenian demagogue. Hyperballein itself was formed from hyper-, meaning "beyond," and ballein, "to throw." 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 April 8, 2017 is: alow • \uh-LOH\ • adverb : below Examples: "She had studding-sails out alow and aloft, with a light but steady breeze, and her captain said he could not get more than four knots out of her and thought he should have a long passage." — Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, 1840 "Mr. Blunt remained seated, assessed them alow and aloft and came to settle upon James, looking him right in the eye." — James Spurr, One Sloop and Slow Match, 2008 Did you know? In nautical use, alow means "in or to a lower part of the vessel," indicating the deck or the area of the rigging closest to the deck, or below-deck as opposed to above-deck. The opposite of alow in this sense is aloft, used to indicate a higher part of the vessel especially around the mastheads or the higher rigging. Yet, while we are still likely to encounter aloft, in both nautical and non-nautical use, alow has become something of a rarity. When encountered, it is usually found in the combination "alow and aloft." This phrase literally refers to the upper and lower parts of a ship or its rigging, but it can also be used, as in our second example sentence, to mean "completely" or "thoroughly." 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 April 7, 2017 is: flack • \FLACK\ • verb : to provide publicity : engage in press-agentry Examples: The singer spent two weeks on the talk-show circuit, flacking for her new memoir. "Celebrity endorsements for soda have been around for years.… More recently, Taylor Swift (Diet Coke), Beyonce (Pepsi) and Steve Harvey (Coke again) have flacked for soda." — Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, The Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA), 18 Sept. 2015 Did you know? The verb flack comes from a noun flack: during the late 1930s, flack came to be used as a name for a press agent. According to one rumor, the word was coined in tribute to a well-known movie publicist of the time, Gene Flack. Another rumor holds that it derives from a similar-sounding Yiddish word for someone who talks about someone else's affairs. The editors of Merriam-Webster dictionaries remain skeptical about these claims and have listed the etymology of flack as "unknown." You may also be familiar with another flack—a noun meaning "criticism" or "opposition." This unrelated homograph stems from a misspelling of flak, a German acronym and English word for antiaircraft guns. 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 April 6, 2017 is: cloying • \KLOY-ing\ • adjective : disgusting or distasteful by reason of excess; also : excessively sweet or sentimental Examples: "In Raymond Chandler's first novel The Big Sleep (1939), Philip Marlowe visits a client in his orchid house, where the air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom." — Amy Henderson, The Weekly Standard, 20 Feb. 2017 "A snap of the Eiffel Tower using only the #ParisLove hashtag requires no elaboration—been there, done that—while a photo of the Taj Mahal, simply tagged #EternalLove, can feel more cloying than compelling." — Adam Bisby, The Globe and Mail (Canada), 25 Feb. 2017 Did you know? "Can one desire too much of a good thing?" asks Rosalind in William Shakespeare's play As You Like It. Cloying suggests that you can because it implies a repugnant excess of something that might be pleasing in smaller doses. An exploration into the history of cloying, however, leads us eventually to roots that are neither sweet nor excessive, but rather tough as nails. Cloying derives from the verb cloy, which now means "to supply or indulge to excess," but which once meant "to clog" and earlier "to prick a horse with a nail in shoeing." Cloy itself traces via Middle English to Anglo-French encloer (which also meant "to prick a horse with a nail in shoeing") and ultimately to Latin clavus, meaning "nail." 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 April 5, 2017 is: defile • \dih-FYLE\ • verb : to march off in a line Examples: The generals gazed on impassively as the troops defiled past. "He watched as the troops defiled across the bridge; their thinned ranks made a noticeable impression on the monarch." — Michael V. Leggiere, Napoleon and the Struggle for Germany, 2015 Did you know? It's likely that when you hear the verb defile, what comes to mind is not troop movements but, rather, something being contaminated or desecrated. That more commonly encountered homograph of defile, meaning "to make unclean or impure," dates back to the 15th century and is derived from the Anglo-French verb defoiller, meaning "to trample." Today's word, on the other hand, arrived in English in the early 18th century. It is also from French but is derived from the verb défiler, formed by combining dé- with filer ("to move in a column"). Défiler is also the source of the English noun defile, which means "narrow passage or gorge." 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 April 4, 2017 is: gimcrack • \JIM-krak\ • noun : a showy object of little use or value : gewgaw Examples: The harmonica that Carrie kept in her desk drawer was a gimcrack that she had won as a carnival prize many years ago. "He painted his office a deep crimson …, and then added period sconces, arrangements of pheasant feathers and various other gimcracks all meant to resemble, get this, the Red Room of the PBS show 'Downton Abbey.'" — Margaret Carlson, The Morning Call, 19 Mar. 2015 Did you know? Gimcrack is one of many peculiar-sounding words that have pervaded our language to refer to something ornamental and of little value. Others include bauble, trinket, knickknack, gewgaw, kickshaw and tchotchke. Bauble appears to be the oldest among the group, with known evidence of usage dating back to the 14th century. The earliest available evidence of gewgaw and kickshaw is from the 16th century, whereas gimcrack and knickknack established themselves in the 17th century. Tchotchke, borrowed from Yiddish, is by far the most recent addition to our language, first appearing as an English word in the 20th 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 April 3, 2017 is: brachiate • \BRAY-kee-ayt\ • verb : to progress by swinging from hold to hold by the arms Examples: Sarah sat on the park bench and watched as her five-year-old son confidently brachiated along the monkey bars. "Designed to replicate the natural forest environment, Gibbon Forest encourages its animals to display their natural behaviours, which include loud calling, rarely descending to the ground and brachiating…." — Nick Reid, The Tamworth (UK) Herald Series, 16 Feb. 2017 Did you know? Certain members of the ape family, such as the gibbon, have the ability to propel themselves by grasping hold of an overhead tree branch (or other projection) and swinging the body forward. (Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans are less likely to travel in this manner, due to the weight of their bodies; when they do, it is only for very short distances.) The word for this action, brachiate, derives from bracchium, the Latin word for "arm." Brachiate shares etymological ancestors with such words as bracelet (an ornamental band or chain worn around the wrist) and brachiopod (a category of marine organisms with armlike feeding organs called lophophores). Another relative is pretzel. That word's German root, Brezel, is related to the Latin brachiatus, meaning "having branches like arms." 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 April 2, 2017 is: ignoble • \ig-NOH-bul\ • adjective 1 : of low birth or common origin : plebeian 2 : characterized by baseness, lowness, or meanness Examples: "Luthor has been hanging around Superman's arctic fortress … devising plans for world dictatorship and other ignoble acts." — Kevin Canfield, The Journal News, 27 Jun. 2006 "Suburbs are sometimes portrayed as ignoble compared to cities, and media centers like New York and Washington attract young, pro-urban writers who trumpet their hometown virtues." — Tyler Cowen, The Bay City (Michigan) Times, 17 Oct. 2016 Did you know? The word noble, in addition to referring to someone born to aristocratic ranks, can also be used to describe someone of outstanding character. That word first appeared in English in the 13th century, and its antonym, ignoble, came about two centuries later. Ignoble derives via Middle English and Middle French from the Latin prefix in- ("not") and the Old Latin gnobilis ("noble"). Originally, ignoble described someone born to common or plebeian origins, but by the late 16th century it had come to describe people of dishonorable character, or the actions performed by such people. 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 April 1, 2017 is: vaticination • \vuh-tiss-uh-NAY-shun\ • noun 1 : something foretold : prediction 2 : the act of prophesying Examples: "In fact, origin stories are not about the past at all: they are not eyewitness reportage, they are not history, they are not diary entries detailing actual bygone events. Similarly, end-time stories are not about the future at all: they are not predictions, they are not vaticinations, they are not crystal-ball visions.… The stories are fictive efforts offered as instructions for the present moment." — J. H. McKenna, The Huffington Post, 5 Dec. 2016 "Imagined futures that are really thinly disguised commentaries on current affairs are not chiefly concerned with reliable prediction. Yet look in the periphery of such allegorical tales and you can find some surprisingly accurate vaticination." — The Economist, 10 June 2006 Did you know? When George Orwell's novel 1984 was published in 1949, a displeased critic said it broke "all records for gloomy vaticination." (In Orwell's favor, another critic asserted, "It is impossible to put the book down.") While it's about as difficult to predict the future of a word as the future of the world, hindsight reveals that vaticination has endured better than other words based on Latin vates, meaning "prophet." Vaticinian ("prophetic"), vaticinar ("prophet"), vaticinatress ("prophetess"), and vaticiny ("prophesy") have all faded into obscurity (although two synonyms of prophetic, vatic and vaticinal, also keep the vates lineage alive 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 March 31, 2017 is: munificent • \myoo-NIF-uh-sunt\ • adjective 1 : very liberal in giving or bestowing : lavish 2 : characterized by great liberality or generosity Examples: "On the hill, where kites used to be flown, stood the fine college which Mr. Laurence's munificent legacy had built." — Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys, 1886 "Each taco is $3, and each is munificent. You might not manage more than two." — Ligaya Mishan, The New York Times, 9 Dec. 2016 Did you know? Munificent was formed back in the late 1500s when English speakers, perhaps inspired by similar words such as magnificent, altered the ending of munificence. Munificence in turn comes from munificus, the Latin word for "generous," which itself comes from munus, a Latin noun that is variously translated as "gift," "duty," or "service." Munus has done a fine service to English by giving us other terms related to service or compensation, including municipal and remunerate. 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 30, 2017 is: transpicuous • \tran-SPIK-yuh-wus\ • adjective : clearly seen through or understood Examples: "Measuring and studying a small business is not inherently different from doing it for a large corporation if its financial reports are set up to be transpicuous and to make its activities transparent and there is an incentive for making them so." — Isabel Anderson, The Financial Post (Canada), 28 Jan. 2006 "… the surfaces of his literary work were so terribly transpicuous, so banally boring—simple declaratives rife with simple vocabulary." — Joshua Cohen, Harper's, July 2012 Did you know? Transpicuous is derived from the Latin word transpicere, meaning "to look through." Transpicere, in turn, is a formation that combines trans-, meaning "through," and specere, meaning "to look" or "to see." If you guessed that transpicuous is related to conspicuous, you're correct. It's also possible to see a number of other specere descendants in English, including aspect, circumspect, expect, inspect, perspective, and suspect. Another descendant of specere, and a close synonym of transpicuous, is perspicuous, which means "clear and easy to understand," as in "a perspicuous argument." (Per-, like trans-, means "through.") There's also perspicacious, meaning "keen and observant." (You might say that perspicuous and transpicuous mean "able to be seen through," whereas perspicacious means "able to see 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 29, 2017 is: Occam's razor • \AH-kumz-RAY-zer\ • noun : a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities Examples: Invoking Occam's razor, Randall concluded that the sill was wet most likely because someone left the window open during the storm. "To even describe the plot is to make clear how phantasmagorical the whole idea is. Occam's razor applies here. Or, as medical students are taught, when you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras." — Paul Cassell, The Washington Post, 6 Feb. 2017 Did you know? William of Occam (also spelled "Ockham") didn't invent the rule associated with his name. Others had espoused the "keep it simple" concept before that 14th-century philosopher and theologian embraced it, but no one wielded the principle (also known as the "law of parsimony") as relentlessly as he did. He used it to counter what he considered the fuzzy logic of his theological contemporaries, and his applications of it inspired 19th-century Scottish philosopher Sir William Hamilton to link Occam with the idea of cutting away extraneous material, giving us the modern name for the principle. 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 28, 2017 is: retrospective • \reh-truh-SPEK-tiv\ • adjective 1 a : contemplative of or relative to past events : characterized by, given to, or indulging in retrospection b : being a generally comprehensive exhibition, compilation, or performance of the work of an artist over a span of years 2 : affecting things past : retroactive Examples: The audit revealed that the organization owed retrospective taxes. "The 1998 retrospective Ladies and Gentlemen—The Best of George Michael (Epic/Sony) is the album to receive the most attention in the late singer-songwriter's catalogue…." — Paul Sexton, Billboard.com, 30 Dec. 2016 Did you know? "Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again," wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his 1839 novel Hyperion. But these days the past is trendy, old-fashioned is hip, and retrospective is as retro as it gets. A glance at the history of retrospective reveals that it traces back to the Latin retro- (meaning "back," "behind," or "backward") and specere (meaning "to look at"). Once you have retrospective behind you, you can also add its kin retrospect (which is used as a noun, an adjective, and a verb) and retrospection to your vocabulary, too. Retrospective can also be used as a noun, referring to an exhibition that "looks back" at artistic work created over a span of years. 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 27, 2017 is: sarcasm • \SAHR-kaz-um\ • noun 1 : a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain 2 a : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual b : the use or language of sarcasm Examples: "I'm seeing more and more of my friends coming to watch the races instead of being a part of them. And then, some of the girls that are racing against me are literally half my age. It's awesome. Don't know if you can hear my sarcasm—really awesome." — Lindsey Vonn, The Associated Press, 3 Nov. 2015 "Often, users on social media tend to portray complicated social and political issues as simple and obvious, at times employing sarcasm or satire to disparage those who disagree." — James Lee, The Daily Pennsylvanian (University of Pennsylvania), 12 Feb. 2017 Did you know? If you've ever been hurt by a remark full of cutting sarcasm, you have some insight into the origins of the word. Sarcasm can be traced back to the Greek verb sarkazein, which initially meant "to tear flesh like a dog." Sarkazein eventually developed extended senses of "to bite one's lips in rage," "to gnash one's teeth," and "to sneer." The verb led to the Greek noun sarkasmos, ("a sneering or hurtful remark"), iterations of which passed through French and Late Latin before arriving in English as sarcasm in the 17th century. Even today sarcasm is often described as sharp, cutting, or wounding, reminiscent of the original meaning of the Greek verb. 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 26, 2017 is: perpend • \per-PEND\ • verb 1 : to reflect on carefully : ponder 2 : to be attentive : reflect Examples: Perpend: it is easier to build on a good first impression than it is to repair a bad one. "Okay folks, it looks like all is not lost. Electronic Arts is at least perpending their stance heading into the next-generation of console gaming and after originally writing off Nintendo's Wii U, they've now reneged on that stance and are reconsidering the Big 'N's offerings." — William Usher, Cinema Blend, 23 Aug. 2013 Did you know? Perpend isn't used often these days, but when it does show up it is frequently imperative, as in "Perpend the following." As such, its use can be compared to the phrases "consider this" or "mark my words." Perpend arrived in English in the 15th century from the Latin verb perpendere, which in turn comes from pendere, meaning "to weigh." Appropriately, our English word essentially means "to weigh carefully in the mind." Pendere has several descendants in English, including append, compendium, expend, and suspend. Perpend can also be a noun meaning "a brick or large stone reaching through a wall" or "a wall built of such stones," but that perpend comes from a Middle French source and is unrelated to the verb. 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 25, 2017 is: unreconstructed • \un-ree-kun-STRUK-tud\ • adjective : not reconciled to political, economic, or social change; also : holding stubbornly to a particular belief, view, place, or style Examples: "When Jane Austen wrote 'Pride and Prejudice' in the early years of the 19th century, there was no heroic place for the unreconstructed nerd in the throbbing romantic novel." — Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune, 22 Nov. 2016 "Writers of all descriptions are stampeding to buy word processors. Machines have already become so user-friendly that even the most unreconstructed of Luddites can be charmed into laying down the old sledgehammer and stroking a few keys instead." — Thomas Pynchon, The New York Times, 28 Oct. 1984 Did you know? The reorganization and reestablishment of the seceded states in the Union after the American Civil War is referred to as the Reconstruction. The earliest known use of unreconstructed is by a writer for the Boston, Massachusetts, publication The Liberator, who in 1865 used it to describe Southerners who were not reconciled to the outcome of the War and the changes enacted during the Reconstruction. The word immediately caught on and has been used to refer to intransigent or dyed-in-the-wool partisans ever since. The word is also used outside of political and social contexts, as when a person is described as "an unreconstructed rocker" or "an unreconstructed romantic." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.