Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 10, 2019 is:

newspeak • \NOO-speek\  • noun, often capitalized

: propagandistic language marked by euphemism , circumlocution , and the inversion of customary meanings

Examples:

"Remember that in 1984 , totalitarian newspeak is created not through elaborate sentences and jargon, but through cutting words out of the dictionary and simplifying grammar. Clear, transparent writing can be used for propaganda purposes as easily as can convoluted prose—and maybe even more easily." — Noah Berlatsky, The Chronicle of Higher Education , 16 July 2011

"He'd lost his birthplace after the Yalta agreement, when his native region was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Since his family was Polish, they decided to join thousands of other 'repatriates ' and re-settle in the area in Poland that the communists' newspeak labeled 'the Recovered Territories.'" — Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, American Scholar , Summer 2010

Did you know?

The term newspeak was coined by George Orwell in his 1949 anti-utopian novel 1984 . In Orwell's fictional totalitarian state, Newspeak was a language favored by the minions of Big Brother and, in Orwell's words, "designed to diminish the range of thought." Newspeak was characterized by the elimination or alteration of certain words, the substitution of one word for another, the interchangeability of parts of speech, and the creation of words for political purposes. The word has caught on in general use to refer to confusing or deceptive bureaucratic jargon.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 9, 2019 is:

cap-a-pie • \kap-uh-PEE\  • adverb

: from head to foot

Examples:

The birthday girl—dressed cap-a-pie as a princess, from tiara to sequined slippers—waited excitedly for her guests to arrive.

"When they all appear at the elegant ball for the Prince of Wales, the men's outfits outshine the women's and the villain of the story, the French fanatic Chauvelin, cap-a-pie in ominous black, makes a striking contrast." — Marie D. Galyean, The Boise (Idaho) Weekly , 9 Aug. 2006

Did you know?

Think of a medieval knight riding off to battle completely encased (from head to foot, as it were) in armor. Knights thus outfitted were said to be "armed cap-a-pie." The term cap-a-pie (or cap-à-pie ), which has been used in English since at least the 16th century, descends from the Middle French phrase de cap a pé , meaning "from head to foot." Nowadays, it is generally extended to more figurative armor, as in "armed cap-a-pie against criticism." Cap-a-pie has also been credited with parenting another English phrase. Some people think the expression "apple-pie order ," meaning "perfect order," may have originated as a corruption of "cap-a-pie order." The evidence for that theory is far from orderly, however, and it must be regarded as speculative.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 8, 2019 is:

shard • \SHAHRD\  • noun

1 a : a piece or fragment of a brittle substance; broadly : a small piece or part : scrap

b : shell , scale ; especially : elytron

2 : a fragment of a pottery vessel found on sites and in refuse deposits where pottery-making peoples have lived

3 : highly angular curved glass fragments of tuffaceous sediment

Examples:

There were shards of glass on the floor where the burglars had broken into the building the night before.

"Some 2,600 years ago, in the land of ancient Israel, a military official inked a request onto the reverse side of a pottery shard : 'If there is any wine, send [quantity].' Archaeologists found the shard in the 1960s, but the boozy inscription, which had faded to near invisibility, went unnoticed for decades." — Brigit Katz, Smithsonian , 22 June 2017

Did you know?

Shard dates back to Old English (where it was spelled sceard ), and it is related to the Old English word scieran, meaning "to cut." English speakers have adopted the modernized shard spelling for most uses, but archeologists prefer to spell the word sherd when referring to the ancient fragments of pottery they unearth. Other specialized uses of the word shard include a sense referring to the thick front wings in beetles that protect a hind pair of wings and another sense used for the highly angular curved glass fragments of a type of volcanic rock formation.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 7, 2019 is:

Mirandize • \muh-RAN-dyze\  • verb

: to recite the Miranda warnings to (a person under arrest)

Examples:

"Miranda warnings only kick in if you're going to interrogate a suspect. And so if they didn't Mirandize him, and they didn't ask him any questions, that wouldn't be a problem at all. The remedy for failing to Mirandize someone is that their statements to the officers then become inadmissible at trial. — Barbara McQuade, quoted on MSNBC, 1 Feb. 2019

"According to the website, Heller's motion is baseless as there was no need for police to Mirandize the actress since she wasn't in their custody, and it's 'perfectly legal to question people involved in a car accident without reading them their rights.'" — The Huffington Post , 26 Feb. 2013

Did you know?

"You have the right to remain silent...." These seven words typically begin the notification that police recite to inform a suspect of his or her rights while in custody. The law requiring this recitation stemmed from a 1966 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Miranda v. Arizona ) in which the court overturned the conviction of Ernesto A. Miranda on charges of rape and kidnapping. The court had determined that Miranda confessed to the crime without being informed that he could remain silent during questioning. The list of rights that must be recited to a suspect in custody subsequently became known as "the Miranda warnings." And by the 1970s, people began using the verb Mirandize in reference to such a recitation.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 6, 2019 is:

abecedarian • \ay-bee-see-DAIR-ee-un\  • adjective

1 a : of or relating to the alphabet

b : alphabetically arranged

2 : rudimentary

Examples:

The children recited an abecedarian chant, beginning with "A is for apple" and ending with "Z is for zebra."

"Aficionados of Sue Grafton's popular detective novels starring Kinsey Millhone will not be disappointed by S is for Silence , Grafton's 19th book in her abecedarian series launched in 1982 with A is for Alibi ." — Jan Collins, The State (Columbia, South Carolina), 11 Dec. 2005

Did you know?

The history of abecedarian is as simple as ABC—literally. The term's Late Latin ancestor, abecedārius (which meant "alphabetical"), was created as a combination of the letters A, B, C, and D, plus the adjective suffix -arius ; you can hear the echo of that origin in the pronunciation of the English term (think "ABC-darian"). In its oldest documented English uses in the early 1600s, abecedarian was a noun meaning "one learning the rudiments of something"; it specifically referred to someone who was learning the alphabet. The adjective began appearing in English texts a few decades after the noun.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 5, 2019 is:

leviathan • \luh-VYE-uh-thun\  • noun

1 a often capitalized Leviathan : a sea monster defeated by Yahweh in various scriptural accounts

b : a large sea animal

2 capitalized Leviathan : the political state; especially : a totalitarian state having a vast bureaucracy

3 : something large or formidable

Examples:

"Fossils of the ancient leviathan were unearthed from 480-million-year-old rocks exposed on a hillside in southeastern Morocco." — Sid Perkins, Science , 11 Mar. 2015

"… [T]he extension of the Star Wars story has been the biggest global movie phenomenon since Avatar …. It is a leviathan , totaling nearly $4.5 billion in global ticket sales and an entire subcultural media industry." — Sean Fennessey, The Ringer , 25 May 2018

Did you know?

Old Testament references to a huge sea monster, Leviathan (in Hebrew, Liwyāthān ), are thought to spring from an ancient myth in which the god Baal slays a multiheaded sea monster. Leviathan appears in the book of Psalms as a sea serpent that is killed by God and then given as food to creatures in the wilderness, and it is referred to in the book of Job as well. We began equating Leviathan with the political state after the philosopher Thomas Hobbes used the word in (and as the title of) his 1651 political treatise on government. Today, Leviathan often suggests a crushing political bureaucracy. Leviathan can also be immensely useful as a general term meaning "something monstrous or of enormous size."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 4, 2019 is:

feisty • \FYE-stee\  • adjective

1 chiefly Southern US and Midland US

a : full of nervous energy : fidgety

b : touchy , quarrelsome

c : exuberantly frisky

2 : having or showing a lively aggressiveness : spunky

Examples:

"She's feisty . She's bawdy. She's bodacious.... She's a bit of a wild child." — Vicki Lawrence, quoted in The New York Magazine , 5 Oct. 2018

"The rise of satellite and cable technology in the nineties created new possibilities for nationally syndicated programs built around feisty , voice-driven pundits." — Hua Hsu, The New Yorker , 24 Sept. 2018

Did you know?

In certain parts of the United States, most notably the South, the noun feist (pronounced to rhyme with heist ) refers to a small dog used in hunting small game animals (such as squirrels). Also spelled fice or fyce , it comes from an obsolete term, "fisting hound," that derived from another obsolete term, fist , a verb that once meant "to break wind." The term feisty has come a long way from its flatulent origin, but its small-dog association still seems relevant: the term conveys the spunk and determination that one may associate with a dog that manages to make its presence known (either through its bark or its bite) despite its small size.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 3, 2019 is:

sentient • \SEN-shee-unt\  • adjective

1 : responsive to or conscious of sense impressions

2 : having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge : aware

3 : finely sensitive in perception or feeling

Examples:

"Frightened of the potential that a vast automated intelligence represents, we often portray sentient intelligences as the equivalent of machine gods—ones that, in many cases, find us wanting." — Mark Hachman, PC Magazine , 15 Apr. 2013

"Diana's hippie-Wiccan aunts … live in one of the tale's more charming inventions: a funky, sentient house that rattles the crockery when it's irritated and supplies flashbacks by conjuring up life-size holographic scenes in situ ." — Mike Hale, The New York Times , 18 Jan. 2019

Did you know?

You may have guessed that sentient has something to do with the senses. The initial spelling sent- or sens- is often a giveaway for such a meaning. A sentient being is one who perceives and responds to sensations of whatever kind—sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. Sentient ultimately comes from the Latin verb sentire , which means "to feel" or "to perceive," and is related to the noun sensus , meaning "sense." A few related English words are sentiment and sentimental , which have to do with emotions, sensual , which relates to more physical sensations , and the trio of assent , consent , and dissent , which involve one's expressions of agreement (or disagreement in the case of dissent ) in thought and feeling with another.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 2, 2019 is:

vox populi • \VOKS-POP-yoo-lye\  • noun

: popular sentiment

Examples:

"As has increasingly been the case in the six years since officials instituted a fan-voting component in 2012, acts ultimately chosen for induction also strongly reflect the vox populi : Def Leppard won that balloting this year, collecting more than 500,000 votes among the total of 3.3 million entered in the fan competition." — Randy Lewis, The Los Angeles Times , 13 Dec. 2018

"While the Academy is certainly no stranger to controversy, they surely don't want to court it openly with hires that turn out to be less than ideal. Not to mention, the Academy Awards on the whole have become subject to somewhat of a critical reevaluation by the vox populi ." — Mike Reyes, Cinema Blend , 11 Jan. 2019

Did you know?

Vox populi is a Latin phrase that literally translates as "the voice of the people." It can be found in the longer maxim, Vox populi, vox Dei , which means "The voice of the people is the voice of God." Many people think that expression means that the people are always right, but it really implies that the will of the masses—right or wrong—is often irresistible. Since the mid-20th century, English speakers, especially British ones, have trimmed vox populi down to the abbreviated form vox pop , an expression used particularly for popular opinion as it is used and expressed by the media.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 1, 2019 is:

gormless • \GORM-lus\  • adjective

chiefly British : lacking intelligence : stupid

Examples:

"It would be difficult to think of many things more gormless than driving a car while blindfolded…." — Fergus Kelly, The Express , 16 Jan. 2019

"On screen, Laurel played gormless underling to Hardy's finicky little king. Off screen, though, the roles were reversed. Laurel co-directed the pictures and devised the bulk of the gags." — Xan Brooks, The Guardian , 4 Jan. 2019

Did you know?

Gormless began life as the English dialect word gaumless , which was altered to the modern spelling when it expanded into wider use in the late 19th century. The origins of gaumless are easy to understand; the word derives from a combination of the dialect noun gaum , meaning "attention" or "understanding," and the suffix -less . This gaum has a related verb, also limited to dialect use, meaning "to pay attention to" and "to understand." Perhaps surprisingly, the four-letter gaum has multiple additional dialectal uses that are etymologically unrelated to these. Also noun-and-verb pairs, gaum means "a sticky or greasy mess" and "to smudge or smear especially with something sticky or greasy," as well as "a stupid doltish person" and "to behave in a stupid or awkward manner." Use of all of these pales in comparison to that of gormless , however, which is most frequently seen in British English.