Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 30, 2019 is:

martinet • \mar-tuh-NET\  • noun

1 : a strict disciplinarian

2 : a person who stresses a rigid adherence to the details of forms and methods

Examples:

"Her father was a diet-and-exercise martinet , imposing a strict regimen on her as a condition for receiving an allowance." — Michael Upchurch, The Boston Globe , 20 Aug. 2017

"Topping them all, though, has to be Gen. William Westmoreland. Tall. Ramrod straight. Grim visage. He just had that look, and he … is the subject of endless debate. Was he a martinet who never really understood his war and cost America a chance at victory, or was he perhaps something more complex?" — Andrew Wiest and Susannah Ural, The New York Times , 9 Oct. 2017

Did you know?

When France's King Louis XIV appointed Lieutenant Colonel Jean Martinet to be inspector general of the infantry in the late 17th century, he made a wise choice. As a drillmaster, Martinet trained his troops to advance into battle in precise linear formations and to fire in volleys only upon command, thus making the most effective use of inaccurate muskets—and making the French army one of the best on the continent. He also gave English a new word. Martinet has been used synonymously with "strict disciplinarian" since the early 18th century.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 29, 2019 is:

augur • \AW-gur\  • verb

1 : to foretell especially from omens

2 : to give promise of : presage

Examples:

"The new discovery should provide insight into the elusive origins of the strange bright signals, and augurs a dawning era in which they will be found and studied by the thousands." — Nola Taylor Redd, Scientific American , 13 Aug. 2018

"Still, combined with Denver's lack of postseason experience, its recent struggles against top competition doesn't augur well for a deep playoff run." — Grant Hughes, Bleacher Report , 5 Apr. 2019

Did you know?

Auguring is what augurs did in ancient Rome. Augurs were official diviners whose function it was not to foretell the future, but to divine whether the gods approved of a proposed undertaking, such as a military move. They did so by various means, among them observing the behavior of birds and examining the entrails of sacrificed animals. Nowadays, the foretell sense of the verb is often used with an adverb, such as well . Augur comes from Latin and is related to the Latin verb augēre, meaning "to increase."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 28, 2019 is:

irascible • \ir-RASS-uh-bul\  • adjective

: marked by hot temper and easily provoked anger

Examples:

That tidy little house belongs to an irascible crank who never has a kind word for any of his neighbors.

"Working with Adam Baldwin, best known as the irascible mercenary Jayne in Firefly and Serenity and the gruff but lovable John Casey on Chuck , was another bonus." — Tim Clodfelter, The Winston-Salem (North Carolina) Journal , 8 June 2019

Did you know?

If you try to take apart irascible in the same manner as irrational , irresistible , or irresponsible , you might find yourself wondering what ascible means—but that's not how irascible came to be. The key to the meaning of irascible isn't the negative prefix ir- (which is a variant of the prefix in- that is used before words beginning with "r"), but the Latin noun ira , meaning "anger." From ira , which is also the root of irate and ire , came the Latin verb irasci ("to become angry") and the related adjective irascibilis , the latter of which led to the French irascible . English speakers borrowed the word from French in the 16th century.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 27, 2019 is:

desuetude • \DESS-wih-tood\  • noun

: discontinuance from use or exercise : disuse

Examples:

The old bridge, which fell into desuetude after the railroad was shut down, has recently been opened as a pedestrian walkway.

"It has been 15 years since Mr. Klein and his partners paid $18 million for the Sunset Tower, a faded Art Deco relic on a stretch of Sunset Strip that, although now booming, had fallen into funky desuetude . Against most odds and all prevailing wisdom, he soon established it and its Tower Bar restaurant as essential landmarks of the new Hollywood." — Guy Trebay, The New York Times , 23 Feb. 2019

Did you know?

Desuetude must be closely related to disuse , right? Wrong. Despite the similarities between them, desuetude and disuse derive from two different Latin verbs. Desuetude comes from suescere , a word that means "to become accustomed" (suescere also gave us the word custom ). Disuse descends from uti , which means "to use." (That Latin word also gave us use and utility .) Although less common, desuetude hasn't fallen into desuetude yet, and it was put to good use in the past, as in the 17th-century writings of Scottish Quaker Robert Barclay, who wrote, "The weighty Truths of God were neglected, and, as it were, went into Desuetude."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 26, 2019 is:

wangle • \WANG-gul\  • verb

1 : to resort to trickery

2 : to adjust or manipulate for personal or fraudulent ends

3 : to make or get by devious means : finagle

Examples:

"He wangled an invitation to a White House Christmas party, where he and his wife posed for a photo with then-President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama." — Barbara Demick and Victoria Kim, The Los Angeles Times , 16 May 2019

"'Our Mayor is the most appealing man I know,' [Franklin D. Roosevelt ] said on one occasion. 'He comes to Washington and tells me a sad story. The tears run down my cheeks and the tears run down his cheeks and the next thing I know, he has wangled another $50 million out of me.'" — Mason B. Williams, City of Ambition , 2013

Did you know?

Wangle , a verb of uncertain origin, has been used in its newest sense, "to obtain by sly methods," since at least the early 20th century. Occasionally, one sees wrangle used similarly, as in "wrangle a huge salary," but more typically it means "to argue or engage in controversy." Did the "obtain" sense of wrangle evolve through confusion with wangle ? Not exactly. Wrangle was used with the meaning "to obtain by arguing or bargaining" since the early 17th century, long before wangle appeared in the language. The sense had all but disappeared until recent decades, however, and its revival may very well have been influenced by wangle . The "obtain" sense of wangle is currently more common than that use of wrangle , but both are considered standard.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 25, 2019 is:

kludge • \KLOOJ\  • noun

: a haphazard or makeshift solution to a problem and especially to a computer or programming problem

Examples:

Andy knocked out a hasty kludge to circumvent the buggy code until a more robust solution could be developed.

"When the theatre was built in and opened in 1920, there were no concessions of any kind. Everything that we've done to accommodate modern audiences was a kludge in various ways." — Curtis McCrary, quoted in The Tucson (Arizona) Weekly , 25 Oct. 2018

Did you know?

The first recorded use of the word kludge is attributed to Jackson W. Granholm, who defined the word in a 1962 issue of the magazine Datamation as "an ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole." He further explained that it was derived from the German word klug , meaning "smart" or "witty." Why Granholm included a d in his spelling is not known. What we do know is that speakers of American English have agreed to disregard it in pronunciation, making the vowel pronunciation of kludge reflective of the pronunciation of German klug (\KLOOK\ ). We can also tell you that not everyone agrees with Granholm on the "d" matter: the spelling kluge is also popularly used.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 24, 2019 is:

sporadic • \spuh-RAD-ik\  • adjective

: occurring occasionally, singly, or in irregular or random instances

Examples:

The team's regular meetings became sporadic over the summer months, when at some points up to half of its members were on vacation.

"Continuous permafrost hugs the Hudson Bay coast and spreads inland about 75 kilometres before becoming discontinuous and sporadic . Like peat , permafrost is an effective storehouse of greenhouse gases." — Kenyon Wallace, The Toronto Star , 27 May 2019

Did you know?

Sporadic describes the distribution of something across space or time that is not frequent enough to fill an area or period, often in scattered instances or isolated outbursts (as in "sporadic applause"). The word comes from Medieval Latin sporadicus , which is itself derived from Greek sporadēn , meaning "here and there." It is also related to the Greek verb speirein ("to sow"), the ancestor from which we get our word spore (the reproductive cell of a fungus, microorganism, or some plants), hinting at the seeming scattered nature by which such cells spread and germinate.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 23, 2019 is:

excursion • \ik-SKER-zhun\  • noun

1 a : a going out or forth : expedition

b (1) : a usually brief pleasure trip

(2) : a trip at special reduced rates

2 : deviation from a direct, definite, or proper course; especially : digression

3 : a movement outward and back or from a mean position or axis; also : the distance traversed : amplitude

Examples:

Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass is an excursion into a fantastical world where nothing is what it seems to be, and everything appears to be what it is not.

"Every morning for 10 years, Joey Gamez has hopped on a boat to take customers of his Golden State Sportfishing business on a San Francisco Bay excursion , a hobby-turned-business for the 42-year-old." — Alejandra Reyes-Velarde, The Los Angeles Times , 15 July 2019

Did you know?

In Latin, the prefix ex- means "out of" and the verb currere means "to run." When the two are put together, they form the verb excurrere , literally "to run out" or "to extend." Excurrere gave rise not only to excursion but also to excurrent (an adjective for things having channels or currents that run outward) and excursus (meaning "an appendix or digression that contains further exposition of some point or topic"). Other words deriving from currere include corridor , curriculum , and among newer words, parkour .

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 22, 2019 is:

chivy • \CHIV-ee\  • verb

1 : to tease or annoy with persistent petty attacks

2 : to move or obtain by small maneuvers

Examples:

Marielle watched her little brother as he chivied an olive from the jar with his fingers.

"To encounter Hemingway as an adult was to be faced with a man whose appetite for supposedly masculine pursuits was so assiduously cultivated as to border on parody…. He would routinely chivy his friends into the ring in order to engage in tests of strength." — Matthew Adams, The Washington Post , 17 May 2017

Did you know?

Chivy , which is also spelled chivvy , became established in our language in the 19th century and, at first, meant "to harass or chase." Early usage examples are of people chivying a chicken around to catch it and of a person chivying around food that is frying. The verb comes from a British noun chivy meaning "chase" or "hunt." That chivy is believed to be derived from Chevy Chase —a term for "chase" or "confusion" that is taken from the name of a ballad describing the 1388 battle of Otterburn between the Scottish and English. (A chase in this context is an unenclosed tract of land that is used as a game preserve.)

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 21, 2019 is:

misnomer • \miss-NOH-mer\  • noun

1 : the misnaming of a person in a legal instrument

2 a : a use of a wrong or inappropriate name

b : a wrong name or inappropriate designation

Examples:

"When you see flashes along the horizon on a summer night, it could be lightning within a storm that's more than 100 miles away. 'Heat lightning ' is a misnomer —they're just ordinary strikes that lack thunder and appear diffuse when witnessed from a long distance." — John Boyer, The Richmond (Virginia) Times Dispatch , 27 June 2019

"Ten candidates will debate for two hours each night Wednesday and Thursday—although 'debate' is something of a misnomer , in the Lincoln -Douglas sense of the word, given the time constraints and limited ability for great depth or lengthy engagement." — Mark Z. Barabak and Michael Finnegan, The Los Angeles Times , 25 June 2019

Did you know?

What's in a name? Well, in some cases, a name will contain an error, a misunderstanding, or a mislabeling. Historians have long noted that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. The Battle of Bunker Hill was actually fought on Breed's Hill . And the Pennsylvania Dutch are in fact of German ancestry. For such cases, we have the term misnomer , which comes from the Anglo-French verb mesnomer ("to misname") and ultimately has its roots in nomen , the Latin word for "name."