Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 16, 2018 is:

resplendent • \rih-SPLEN-dunt\  • adjective

: shining brilliantly : characterized by a glowing splendor

Examples:

His eyes were drawn to his elegant wife—resplendent in a fashionable evening gown—who had just appeared at the top of the stairway.

"The princes, all of whom have served in some capacity in the British armed forces, were resplendent in blue RAF uniforms, and the women glowed in stylish ensembles." — Maria Puente, USA Today , 11 July 2018

Did you know?

Resplendent has a lot in common with splendid (meaning, among other things, "shining" or "brilliant"), splendent ("shining" or "glossy"), and splendor ("brightness" or "luster"). Each of these glowing terms gets its shine from the Latin verb splendēre ("to shine"). In the case of resplendent , the prefix re- added to splendēre , formed the Latin resplendēre , meaning "to shine back." Splendent , splendor , and resplendent were first used in English during the 15th century, but splendid didn't light up our language until over 175 years later; its earliest known use dates from the early 1600s.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 15, 2018 is:

melancholia • \mel-un-KOH-lee-uh\  • noun

: a mental condition and especially a manic-depressive condition characterized by extreme depression, bodily complaints, and often hallucinations and delusions

Examples:

"Nevertheless, wakened out of her melancholia and called to the dinner table, she changed her mind. A little food in the stomach does wonders." — Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie , 1900

"The ocean as healer beckoned people through the centuries. English doctors of yester-century prescribed 'sea baths' even to dissolve melancholia ." — Liza Field, The Roanoke (Virginia) Times , 13 Jan. 2018

Did you know?

Today's word traces back to Greek melan ‑ ("black, dark") and cholē ("bile"). Medical practitioners once adhered to the system of humors—bodily fluids that included black bile , yellow bile , blood , and phlegm . An imbalance of these humors was thought to lead to disorders of the mind and body. One suffering from an excess of black bile (believed to be secreted by the kidneys or spleen) could become sullen and unsociable—liable to anger, irritability, brooding, and depression. Today, doctors no longer ascribe physical and mental disorders to disruptions of the four humors, but the word melancholia is still used in psychiatry (it is identified as a "subtype" of clinical depression in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ) and as a general term for despondency. The older term ­melancholy , ultimately from the same Greek roots, is historically a synonym of melancholia but now more often refers to a sad or pensive mood.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 14, 2018 is:

advert • \ad-VERT\  • verb

1 : to turn the mind or attention — used with to

2 : to call attention in the course of speaking or writing : make reference — used with to

Examples:

"He also adverted to the practice of demanding that producers take back unsold produce as an 'unfair' practice that concerns the commission." — Patrick Smyth, The Irish Times , 12 Apr. 2018

"Painfully as I am affected by the family calamity which has fallen on me, I cannot let this opportunity pass without adverting to another subject which seriously concerns your welfare…." — Wilkie Collins, No Name , 1862

Did you know?

You may be familiar with the noun advert , which is used, especially in British sources, as a shortened form of advertisement . That's one way to use advert , but it has also been used as a verb in English since the 15th century. There's a hint about the origin of the verb in the idea of "turning" the mind or attention to something; the word derives via Anglo-French from the Latin verb advertere , which in turn comes from Latin vertere , meaning "to turn." Vertere is the ancestor of a number of words in English, including controversy , divert , invert , revert , and even versatile . In addition, we'd like to turn your attention to one particular vertere descendant: avert , meaning "to avoid." Be careful to avoid mixing this one up with advert .

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 13, 2018 is:

taradiddle • \tair-uh-DID-ul\  • noun

1 : a trivial or childish lie : fib

2 : pretentious nonsense

Examples:

"The time came when she not only told her taradiddle about having 'hunted quite a lot,' she even came near believing it." — George Orwell, Burmese Days , 1934

"As truths go, the history of Miss Rossiter she had laid out was unimpressive: a forked-tongue taraddidle of the highest order and if I were to serve it up to Hardy and be found out afterwards I should be lucky to escape arrest, if not a smack on the legs with a hairbrush for the cheek of it." — Catriona McPherson, Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains , 2009

Did you know?

The true origin of taradiddle is unknown, but that doesn't mean you won't encounter a lot of balderdash about its history. Some folks try to connect it to the verb diddle (one meaning of which is "to swindle or cheat"), but that connection hasn't been proven and may turn out to be poppycock . You may even hear some tommyrot about this particular sense of diddle coming from the Old English verb didrian , which meant "to deceive," but that couldn't be true unless didrian was somehow suddenly revived after eight or nine centuries of disuse. No one even knows when taradiddle was first used. It must have been before it showed up in a 1796 dictionary of colloquial speech (where it was defined as a synonym of fib ), but if we claimed we knew who said it first, and when, we'd be dishing out pure applesauce .

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 12, 2018 is:

enigmatic • \en-ig-MAT-ik\  • adjective

: of, relating to, or resembling an enigma : mysterious

Examples:

"The magic of the Mona Lisa 's smile is that it seems to react to our gaze. What is she thinking? She smiles back mysteriously. Look again. Her smile seems to flicker. We glance away, and the enigmatic smile lingers in our minds, as it does in the collective mind of humanity." — Walter Isaacson, The Atlantic , November 2017

"The Chapel of the Good Shepherd , also known as the Nevelson Chapel, is the work of Louise Nevelson, a flamboyant New York City sculptor who rose to prominence for her postwar abstract assemblages that turned street detritus into enigmatic works of art." — Jack Balderrama Morley, The Architects Newspaper (archpaper.com), 15 Aug. 2018

Did you know?

An enigma is a puzzle, a riddle, a mystery. The adjective enigmatic describes what is hard to solve or figure out. An enigmatic person is someone who is a bit mysterious to others. Behind an enigmatic smile are thoughts impossible to guess. The word enigma originally referred not to people or smiles but to words, and specifically to words that formed a riddle or a complicated metaphor that tested one's alertness and cleverness. This meaning is clearly connected to the word's origin. Enigma comes from the Greek word ainissesthai , meaning "to speak in riddles."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 11, 2018 is:

deportment • \dih-PORT-munt\  • noun

: the manner in which one conducts oneself : behavior

Examples:

The candidate chosen for the position had an exceptional resume, but it was her deportment and personality as exhibited during interviews that were the deciding factors.

"The one artisanal, teachable thing is outer conduct. You can't restructure a genome , but, as Mr. Turveydrop, in [Charles Dickens'] 'Bleak House,' insisted, you really can teach deportment ." — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker , 29 Jan. 2018

Did you know?

Deportment evolved from the verb deport , meaning "to behave especially in accord with a code," which in turn came to us through Middle French from Latin deportare , meaning "to carry away." (You may also know deport as a verb meaning "to send out of the country"; that sense is newer and is derived directly from Latin deportare .) Deportment can simply refer to one's demeanor, or it can refer to behavior formed by breeding or training and often conforming to conventional rules of propriety: "Are you not gratified that I am so rapidly gaining correct ideas of female propriety and sedate deportment?" wrote 17-year-old Emily Dickinson to her brother Austin.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 10, 2018 is:

fathom • \FA-thum\  • verb

1 : probe

2 : to take soundings : to measure by a sounding line

3 : to penetrate and come to understand

Examples:

Even those close to him couldn't always fathom why he repeatedly risked his life to climb the world's tallest mountains.

"It was hard to fathom that this canyon was carved not by natural forces, but by humans. But that's the Mesabi Iron Range for you." — Simon Peter Groebner, The Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 15 July 2018

Did you know?

Today's word comes to us from Old English fæthm , meaning "outstretched arms." The noun fathom , which now commonly refers to a measure (especially of depth) of six feet, was originally used for the distance, fingertip to fingertip, created by stretching one's arms straight out from the sides of the body. In one of its earliest uses, the verb fathom meant to encircle something with the arms as if for measuring and was also a synonym of embrace . In the 1600s, however, fathom took on the meaning of using a sounding line to measure depth. At the same time, the verb also developed senses synonymous with probe or investigate , and is now frequently used to refer to the act of getting to the bottom of something, figuratively speaking.

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

wanderlust • \WAHN-der-lust\  • noun

: strong longing for or impulse toward wandering

Examples:

"The trip inspired a new commitment to working with artisans from around the world. It also reanimated her genetic sense of wanderlust . She recently went back to Peru, to meet with a weaver she's been working with since that first trip." — Olivia Stren, Elle , 19 Nov. 2017

"David and Victoria Beckham know how to live life to the fullest. Days after ringing in their 19th wedding anniversary, the Beckhams have embarked on a family vacation to Croatia—and it is wanderlust -inducing." — Marissa G. Muller, W Magazine , 17 July 2018

Did you know?

"For my part," writes Robert Louis Stevenson in Travels with a Donkey , "I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move." Sounds like a case of wanderlust if we ever heard one. Those with wanderlust don't necessarily need to go anywhere in particular; they just don't care to stay in one spot. The etymology of wanderlust is a very simple one that you can probably figure out yourself. Wanderlust is a lust for wandering. The word comes from German, in which wandern means "to hike or roam about," and Lust means "pleasure or delight."

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

periphrasis • \puh-RIFF-ruh-sis\  • noun

1 : use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter form of expression

2 : an instance of periphrasis

Examples:

"There are countless passages of asinine periphrasis : 'The accelerant enzymes her image infuses in Bob create a chemical cocktail he can only counter with self-preservational condescension.' As these examples suggest, the book is only intermittently comprehensible." — James Marriott, The Times (London), 7 Apr. 2018

"Literary translation is challenging, and tends to work best when the translator has recourse to the amplifying and telescoping powers of periphrasis , poetic license, and, if it comes to it, a discreet footnote here or there. Few of these tools are at the disposal of the cinematic translator." — Elias Muhanna, The New Yorker , 30 May 2014

Did you know?

It's easy enough to point out the origins of periphrasis : the word was borrowed into English in the early 16th century via Latin from Greek periphrazein , which in turn comes from the prefix peri -, meaning "all around," and the verb phrazein , "to point out." Two common descendants of phrazein in English are phrase and paraphrase , the latter of which combines phrazein with the prefix para -, meaning "closely resembling." Another phrazein descendant is the less familiar word holophrasis , meaning "the expression of a complex of ideas in a single word or in a fixed phrase." (The prefix holo - can mean "completely.")

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

schmooze • \SHMOOZ\  • verb

1 : to converse informally : chat ; also : to chat in a friendly and persuasive manner especially so as to gain favor, business, or connections

2 : to engage in informal conversation with

Examples:

Conference attendees will have plenty of chances to schmooze with the industry's power players.

"We're spending less time schmoozing with our co-workers, going from an average of 2.5 hours a week in the mid-1970s to under an hour in 2012." — Katrina Trinko, The Visalia (California) Times-Delta , 7 May 2018

Did you know?

Schmooze (also spelled shmooze ) is one of a small, but significant, number of words borrowed from Yiddish that have become relatively common members of the English language. Other such words include chutzpah , lox , maven , mensch , nebbish , schlep , and schlock . Though classified as a High German language, Yiddish also borrows from the Slavic and Latinate languages as well as from Aramaic and Hebrew. It was the Hebrew shěmu’ōth ("news, rumor") that provided Yiddish with the noun shmues ("talk") and the verb shmuesn ("to talk or chat"). Although originally used in English to indicate simply talking in an informal and warm manner, schmooze has since also taken on the suggestion of discussion for the purposes of gaining something.