Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 9, 2018 is:

maladroit • \mal-uh-DROYT\  • adjective

: lacking skill, cleverness, or resourcefulness in handling situations : inept

Examples:

Any project, however carefully planned, is doomed to fail under maladroit management.

"[Lucy Atkins'] tale of a high-flying television historian entangled with a socially maladroit and manipulative 60-something housekeeper is smart and horrifying in equal measure." — Geordie Williamson, The Australian , 16 Dec. 2017

Did you know?

To understand the origin of maladroit , you need to put together some Middle French and Old French building blocks. The first is the word mal , meaning "bad," and the second is the phrase a droit, meaning "properly." You can parse the phrase even further into the components a , meaning "to" or "at," and droit , meaning "right, direct, or straight." Middle French speakers put those pieces together as maladroit to describe the clumsy among them, and English speakers borrowed the word intact back in the 17th century. Its opposite, of course, is adroit , which we adopted from the French in the same century.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 8, 2018 is:

bastion • \BAS-chun\  • noun

1 : a projecting part of a fortification

2 : a fortified area or position

3 a : a place of security or survival

b : a place dominated by a particular group or marked by a particular characteristic

Examples:

"For a century, the automobile has been a bastion of liberty, freeing up almost everybody from the tyranny of other people's schedules." — Charles C. W. Cooke, The National Review , 18 Dec. 2017

"… pets have become a tolerated extension of their owners, accompanying them everywhere they go. It was only a matter of time before spas and resorts followed suit. These latest animal-friendly bastions go out of their way to offer cosseted companions an experience as luxurious as the ones enjoyed by their human escorts." — Chloe Malle, Vogue , January 2018

Did you know?

Bastion is constructed of etymological building blocks that are very similar to those of bastille (a word now used as a general term for a prison, but probably best known as the name of the Parisian fortress-turned-prison stormed by an angry mob at the start of the French Revolution). The history of bastion can be traced through Middle French to the Old Italian verb bastire , which means "to build." Bastille descends from the Old Occitan verb bastir , which also means "to build." Bastir and bastire are themselves of Germanic origin and akin to the Old High German word besten , meaning "to patch."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 7, 2018 is:

reify • \RAY-uh-fye\  • verb

: to consider or represent (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing : to give definite content and form to (a concept or idea)

Examples:

"Increased awareness of automated surveillance, in other words, is most effective at demystifying the systems doing the watching, not reifying their wisdom and authority." — John Herrman, The New York Times , 14 Jan. 2018

"The home is a haven to be sure. There neatness scrubs away history like grease while retaining the polished signs of the past and reifying the timeless." — William H. Gass, The New York Times Book Review , 3 Aug. 1986

Did you know?

Reify is a word that attempts to provide a bridge between what is abstract and what is real. Fittingly, it derives from a word that is an ancestor to real —the Latin noun res , meaning "thing." Both reify and the related noun reification first appeared in English in the mid-19th century. Each word combines the Latin res with an English suffix (-fy and -fication , respectively) that is derived from the Latin -ficare , meaning "to make." In general use, the words refer to the act of considering or presenting an abstract idea in real or material terms, or of judging something by a concrete example.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 6, 2018 is:

ineluctable • \in-ih-LUK-tuh-bul\  • adjective

: not to be avoided, changed, or resisted : inevitable

Examples:

"Mr. Unkrich faced a dilemma. On the one hand, he believed that artists should not be restricted to 'only telling stories about what they know and their own culture.' But he also needed to safeguard against his ineluctable biases and blind spots , and ensure that his film didn't 'lapse into cliché or stereotype.'" — Reggie Ugwu, The New York Times , 19 Nov. 2017

"… Mann's photographs were beautiful, although never cloying, and impossible to reduce to clean readings. But one of the deeper things they captured was the ineluctable pain—even in idyllic circumstances—of growing up." — Sebastian Smee, The Washington Post , 28 Feb. 2018

Did you know?

Like drama, wrestling was popular in ancient Greece and Rome. "Wrestler," in Latin, is luctator , and "to wrestle" is luctari . Luctari also has extended senses—"to struggle," "to strive," or "to contend." Eluctari joins e- ("ex- ") with luctari , forming a verb meaning "to struggle clear of." Ineluctabilis brought in the negative prefix in - to form an adjective describing something that cannot be escaped or avoided; English speakers borrowed ineluctabilis as ineluctable . Another word that has its roots in luctari is reluctant . Reluctari means "to struggle against"—and someone who is reluctant resists or holds back.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 5, 2018 is:

veld • \VELT\  • noun

: a grassland especially of southern Africa usually with scattered shrubs or trees

Examples:

"In the South African cakes you'll find marula —a fruit that grows in the veld , typically used to make a popular liqueur—and naartjie , a type of sweet mandarin orange." — Kristen Hartke, The Washington Post , 23 Aug. 2017

"I duck as swarming bees zoom overhead, trailing their queen. They are gone again in a second, coiling off in a shadowy murmuration across the veldt ." — Aidan Hartley, The Spectator , 13 Jan. 2018

Did you know?

Veld (also spelled veldt ) comes from Afrikaans , the language of the Afrikaners , the descendants of the Dutch and Huguenot people who settled in southern Africa in the 17th century. Literally, veld means "field," and is akin to feld , the Old English predecessor of field . English speakers adopted the Africa-specific sense of veld in the 18th century. Veld refers to open country in southern Africa. Different regions of the veld are distinguished by their elevations. There is the Highveld , the Lowveld , and the Middle Veld, each with different geographical characteristics. Another term associated with veld is kopje (or koppie ). This word came to English from Afrikaans (and ultimately from a Dutch word meaning "small head" or "cup") and refers to a small hill, particularly one on the African veld.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 4, 2018 is:

career • \kuh-REER\  • verb

: to go at top speed especially in a headlong manner

Examples:

The nervous passengers gripped their seats and exchanged anxious looks as the bus careered down the icy road.

"The year continued apace, as Hollywood careered haphazardly between wildly unexpected successes and 'sure things' that bombed just as dramatically." — Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post , 29 Dec. 2017

Did you know?

Chances are you're familiar with the verb careen as used in the sense of "to go forward in a headlong or uncontrolled manner." Similarly, you likely know the noun career meaning "a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling." What you may not know is that the noun career (from Middle French carriere ) originally referred to a course or passage (as in "the sun's career across the sky") and to the speed used to traverse such a course. In the context of medieval tournaments, career referred to the charge of mounted knights as well as to the courses they rode. Verb use eventually developed with a general "to go fast" meaning, and later the more specific sense of moving in a reckless or headlong manner. (If you're wondering, career is not etymologically related to careen ; careen has nautical origins, tracing to the Latin word for "hull.")

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 3, 2018 is:

sensibility • \sen-suh-BIL-uh-tee\  • noun

1 : ability to receive sensations : sensitiveness

2 : peculiar susceptibility to a pleasurable or painful impression (as from praise or a slight) — often used in plural

3 : awareness of and responsiveness toward something (such as emotion in another)

4 : refined or excessive sensitiveness in emotion and taste

Examples:

"In 1973, while heading the New York Philharmonic, he replaced the orchestra members' chairs with rugs and cushions, the better to appeal to the sensibilities of a young, post-hippie audience that regarded classical music as stuffy and pedantic." — George Varga, The San Diego Union-Tribune , 6 Jan. 2016

"His guest appearances mark something more than the usual exchange of core audiences between individual artists, though they are definitely that; they're a chance to enlarge the sensibility of rap itself, to remind himself that, however hard and successfully he strains to be the biggest rapper, rap as a whole is always bigger than he is." — Frank Guan, Vulture , 14 Feb. 2018

Did you know?

From Latin sentire ("to feel"), the meanings of sensibility run the gamut from mere sensation of the sense organs to excessive sentimentality. In between is a capacity for delicate appreciation, a sense often pluralized. In Jane Austen's books, sensibility , a word much appreciated by the novelist, is mostly an admirable quality she attributed to or found lacking in her characters: "He had … a sensibility to what was amiable and lovely" (of Mr. Elliot in Persuasion ). In Sense and Sensibility , however, Austen starts out by ascribing to Marianne sensibleness , on the one hand, but an "excess of sensibility" on the other: "Her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation … she was everything but prudent."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 2, 2018 is:

abide • \uh-BYDE\  • verb

1 a : to bear patiently : tolerate

b : to endure without yielding : withstand

2 : to wait for : await

3 : to accept without objection

4 : to remain stable or fixed in a state

5 : to continue in a place : sojourn

Examples:

Susan has been a vegetarian for years and can no longer abide even the smell of cooked meat.

"They plainly abided a situation that was intolerable, and they shouldn't have done it." — Robert F. Bauer, The New York Times , 20 Feb. 2018

Did you know?

Abide may sound rather old-fashioned these days. The word has been around since before the 12th century, but it is a bit rare now, except in certain specialized uses. Even more archaic to our modern ear is abidden , the original past participle of abide . Today, both the past tense and the past participle of abide are served by either abode or abided , with abided being the more frequent choice. Abide turns up often in the phrase "can't (or couldn't) abide." The expression abide by , which means "to conform to" or "to acquiesce in," is also common. Related terms include the participial adjective abiding (which means "enduring" or "continuing," as in "an abiding interest in nature"), the noun abidance ("continuance" or "compliance"), and the noun abode ("residence").

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 1, 2018 is:

cuckoo • \KOO-koo\  • adjective

1 : of, relating to, or resembling the cuckoo

2 : deficient in sense or intelligence : silly

Examples:

One of the kids had some cuckoo theory about the house being demolished because of evidence of a UFO landing visible in the tiles of its roof.

"[He] says the condiment is for sale and called 'Kathy's Ketchup.' Really, it's Judy's.… It's named for Judy Ebbinghaus, a former co-owner who recently parted ways with the operation. While the visitors might not notice this slip-up, it's the kind of thing that makes a journalist go a little cuckoo ." — Julie Ann Grimm, ­The Santa Fe Reporter , 8 Nov. 2017

Did you know?

The cuckoo bird is so named for its one-note song, which in Middle English was represented as cuccu in imitation. Figurative use of cuckoo , which exists as an adjective meaning "crazy" or "weak in intellect or common sense," and as a noun for a person who can be described as such, may be an allusion to the bird's eponymous (and monotonous) call. But it may also be inspired by a peculiar habit exhibited by some species, in which a female will lay her eggs in the nest of another bird, to be hatched by that bird. In Old French, the name of the bird, cucu , also refers to a husband whose wife is unfaithful. That sense is believed to come from the female cuckoo bird's habit in some species of changing mates, or to the same egg-laying habit that influenced English figurative use. Cucu is also the source of English cuckold .

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 31, 2018 is:

rectitude • \REK-tuh-tood\  • noun

1 : the quality or state of being straight

2 : moral integrity : righteousness

3 : the quality or state of being correct in judgment or procedure

Examples:

As treasurer of the organization, she advocated a kind of fiscal rectitude that is widely credited with saving the organization from financial ruin.

"Integrity doesn't demand flawlessness, but it does require the kind of moral rectitude that enables one to quickly assume responsibility for one's errors, to say 'I was wrong and I am sorry.'" — Jill Filipovic, Mother Jones , 8 Feb. 2018

Did you know?

Rectitude has a righteous derivation. It comes straight from the Latin adjective rectus , which means both "right" and "straight." Rectitude itself can mean either "straightness" (an early use referred to literal straightness of lines, although this sense is now rare) or "rightness" of character. Rectus has a number of other descendants in English, including rectangle (a figure with four right angles), rectify ("to make right"), rectilinear ("moving in or forming a straight line"), and even rectus itself (a medical term for any one of several straight muscles in the body).