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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
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imbroglio
Yesterday00:02:05Summary readyMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 14, 2026 is: imbroglio • \im-BROHL-yoh\ • noun Imbroglio is a formal word that refers to a complex dispute or argument. // Much of the sisters’ text thread involves the the latest imbroglios on their favorite reality show—who’s mad at who for what, and why. See the entry > Examples: “A tangled web of interpersonal feuds, played out in letters to the local newspaper, in social media posts and via legal filings in county court, has left the town with no clear path out of a situation that’s not covered by state law. The imbroglio has even reached the state Capitol ...” — Seth Klamann and Sam Tabachnik, The Denver Post, 8 Mar. 2026 Did you know? Ever noticed how an imbroglio embroils people in controversy? There’s a reason for that—an etymological one, anyway. Both the noun imbroglio (referring to, among other things, a scandal or bitter argument) and verb embroil (“to involve in conflicts or difficulties”) come from the Middle French word embrouiller, a combination of the prefix en- and brouiller, meaning “to jumble,” though they took slightly different paths. Embroil’s was direct, passing from Middle French through French and into English around the turn of the 16th century. Italians altered embrouiller to form imbrogliare, meaning “to entangle,” which spawned the noun imbroglio that English speakers embraced in the mid-18th century. English imbroglio first referred to a confused mass, and later expanded to cover confusing social situations such as complicated disputes, misunderstandings, and scandals.
Summaryparagon
4d ago00:01:41Summary readyMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 11, 2026 is: paragon • \PAIR-uh-gahn\ • noun Paragon is a formal word that refers to a person or thing that is perfect or excellent in some way and should be considered a model or example to be copied. // In Arthurian legend, Sir Galahad is depicted as a paragon of virtue. See the entry > Examples: "With a bar staff locally renowned for its cocktails, curated French cuisine, an extensive champagne menu and immaculately stylish atmosphere ... Claude is the local paragon of elegance." — Elijah Decious, The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), 18 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Paragon comes from the Old Italian word paragone, which literally means "touchstone." A touchstone is a black stone that was formerly used to judge the purity of gold or silver. The metal was rubbed on the stone and the color of the streak it left indicated its quality. In modern English, both touchstone and paragon have come to signify a standard against which something should be judged. Ultimately, paragon comes from the Greek verb parakonan, meaning "to sharpen," from the prefix para- ("alongside of") and akonē, meaning "whetstone."
Summarydudgeon
1w ago00:01:50Summary readyMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 7, 2026 is: dudgeon • \DUJ-un\ • noun Dudgeon is typically used in the phrase “in high dudgeon” to describe someone who is angry and offended by something they perceive to be unfair or wrong. // The customer stormed out of the store in high dudgeon after the manager refused to give them a refund for their purchase. See the entry > Examples: “She was in high dudgeon because her expensive lunch was punctuated by noise from a child ‘a real menace’ whose parents, she said, appeared oblivious to the noise while staff … played with and entertained the tot. If the parents could afford the bill for a place like that, they could afford a babysitter, she snipped.” — Rachel Moore, The Eastern Daily Press (Norwich, England), 6 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Dudgeon is today most often used in the phrase “in high dudgeon” to describe someone in a fit of pique, or more colloquially, in a snit: they are angry and offended because of something they perceive as unfair or wrong. The word has been a part of the English language since at least the late 1500s, but its origins are a mystery. Conjectures connecting dudgeon to a Welsh word, dygen, meaning “malice,” have no basis. Also, there does not appear to be any connection to an even older dudgeon—a term once used for a dagger or a kind of wood out of which dagger handles were made.
Summaryenjoin
Apr 1400:02:04Summary readyMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 14, 2026 is: enjoin • \in-JOIN\ • verb Enjoining is about requiring or prohibiting. To enjoin a person is to direct or order them to do something. To enjoin an act or practice is to prohibit it; in legal contexts, that prohibition is by way of a judicial order. // Our guide enjoined us to take great care as we began our journey. // The court has enjoined the ban. // We were enjoined from speaking on the tour. See the entry > Examples: “Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit Thursday ... to put a landlord accused of providing unsuitable living conditions to his renters out of business. ... The lawsuit seeks restitution for impacted tenants and to ‘enjoin the defendants from doing business in the District.’” — Gary Fields, The Associated Press, 13 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Enjoin has the Latin verb jungere, meaning “to join,” at its root, but the kind of joining expressed by enjoin is quite particular: it is about linking someone to an action or activity by either requiring or prohibiting it. When it’s the former at hand—that is, when enjoin is used to mean “to direct or order someone to do something”—the preposition to is typically employed, as in “they enjoined us to secrecy.” When prohibition is involved, from is common, as in “attendees were enjoined from photographing the event.” In legal contexts, enjoining involves prohibition by judicial order, through means of an injunction, as in “the judge enjoined the sale of the property.”
Summarykibitzer
Apr 1300:01:47Summary readyMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 13, 2026 is: kibitzer • \KIB-it-ser\ • noun A kibitzer is someone who watches other people and makes unwanted comments about what they are doing. // It wasn't long after they bought their house that the couple heard from neighborhood kibitzers offering tips on landscaping and remodeling. See the entry > Examples: "During the chess games, the telegraph operators occasionally asked each other how many people were in the room. At times, a dozen kibitzers looked on. At others, only the rotating cast of chess players and telegraph operators was present." — Greg Uyeno, IEEE Spectrum, 11 Dec. 2025 Did you know? The Yiddish language has given English some particularly piquant terms over the years, and kibitzer (or kibbitzer) is one such word. Kibitzer came into English—by way of the Yiddish kibitser—from the German word kiebitzen, meaning "to look on (at a card game)." (Like its ancestor, kibitzer was originally, and sometimes still is, applied to vocal observers of cards as well as other games.) Although kibitzer usually implies the imparting of unwanted advice, there is a respectable body of evidence for a kibitzer as a person simply making comments or even just shooting the breeze.
Summaryrecondite
Apr 1200:02:10Summary readyMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 12, 2026 is: recondite • \REK-un-dyte\ • adjective Recondite is a formal word used to describe something that is difficult to understand or that is not known by many people. // The text addresses a technical subject using recondite vocabulary, which makes it very difficult to read. // The candy has the perfect balance of sweet and tart, but what delights me most are the recondite facts printed inside the wrapper. See the entry > Examples: “Each medical school has variations in its prerequisites, but all require a strong foundation in the sciences. This includes courses such as the notoriously recondite organic chemistry as well as biology, general chemistry, and physics.” — Richard Menger, Forbes, 18 Aug. 2025 Did you know? Recondite is one of those underused but useful words that’s always a boon to one’s vocabulary. Though it describes something difficult to understand, there is nothing recondite about the word’s history. It dates to the early 1600s, when it was coined from the Latin word reconditus, the past participle of recondere, “to conceal.” (“Concealed” is also a meaning of recondite, albeit an obscure one today.) Remove the re- of recondite and you get something even more obscure: condite, an obsolete verb meaning both “to pickle or preserve” and “to embalm.” Add the prefix in- to that quirky charmer and we get incondite, which means “badly put together,” as in “incondite prose.” All three words have the Latin word condere at their root; that verb is translated variously as “to put or bring together” and “to put up or store”—as in, perhaps, some pickles or preserves.
Summarysubterfuge
Apr 1100:01:58Summary readyMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 11, 2026 is: subterfuge • \SUB-ter-fyooj\ • noun Subterfuge is a formal word that refers to the use of tricks to hide, avoid, or get something. // They obtained the documents by subterfuge. See the entry > Examples: “Despite her difficult childhood, Mavis [Gallant] persevered, through grit, bloody-mindedness, an absence of self-pity, and an ironic sense of humor. Lunch with her was always hilarious and often horrifying: the tales she told about her life exceeded in unlikely gruesomeness even her own fiction. She certainly had the ‘cold eye’ that Yeats recommended for writers, and she saw through subterfuge, no matter who was trying it on.” — Margaret Atwood, The New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2025 Did you know? Though subterfuge is a synonym of deception, fraud, double-dealing, and trickery, there’s nothing tricky about the word’s etymology. English borrowed the word with its meaning from the Late Latin noun subterfugium, which in turn comes from the Latin verb subterfugere, meaning “to escape, evade.” That word combines the prefix subter-, meaning “secretly” (from the adverb subter, meaning “underneath”) with the verb fugere, which means “to flee” and which is also the source of words such as fugitive and refuge, among others.
Summarydecry
Apr 900:01:58Summary readyMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 9, 2026 is: decry • \dih-KRY\ • verb To decry something is to express strong disapproval of it. // The editorial decried the shuttering of the movie theater, which has been a local landmark for many years. See the entry > Examples: “Twenty years ago, I wrote a book about the branding of youth culture called Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers. As a parent, I have come to understand that raising a child who rejects luxury goods and influencer-touted-lip gloss is harder than raising a child who will eagerly decry the concept of capitalism at the dinner table.” — Alissa Quart, LitHub.com, 12 May 2025 Did you know? Decry has several synonyms in English, among them disparage and belittle. Decry suggests an open condemnation that makes it the best choice for cases in which criticism is not at all veiled. The forthrightness expressed by the word is an echo from its ancestry: decry was borrowed in the 17th century from the French verb décrier, meaning “to discredit, to lower in honor or esteem,” and the crier in that word is related to the Anglo-French crier, source of the English verb cry, the oldest meaning of which is “to utter loudly; shout.” Be careful not to confuse decry with the similar-looking (and possibly related) verb descry, meaning “to catch sight of” or “to reveal.”
Summarylaudable
Apr 700:01:44Summary readyMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 7, 2026 is: laudable • \LAW-duh-bul\ • adjective Laudable is a somewhat formal word used to describe something as worthy of praise. It is a synonym of commendable. // Thanks to the laudable efforts of dozens of volunteers, the town's Spring Festival was an enjoyable event for everyone. See the entry > Examples: "Fair and equal access to higher education, regardless of socioeconomic status or geographical location, is a laudable aim." — The Irish Times, 2 July 2025 Did you know? Let's have a hearty round of applause for laudable, a word that never fails to celebrate the positive. Laudable comes ultimately from Latin laud- or laus, meaning "praise," as does laudatory. Take care, however, to consider the differences between the pair: laudable means "deserving praise" or "praiseworthy"; it is typically used to describe things people try to do or achieve ("a laudable goal/aim") or the work they expend to do so ("laudable efforts"). Meanwhile, laudatory means "giving praise" or "expressing praise"; it is almost always used to describe a favorable response to something, as in "laudatory remarks," and "laudatory media coverage."
Summarycotton
Apr 600:02:17Summary readyMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 6, 2026 is: cotton • \KAH-tun\ • verb The verb cotton is used with on or on to to mean “to begin to understand something; to catch on.” Cotton used with to alone means “to begin to like someone or something.” // It took a while, but they are finally starting to cotton on. // She quickly cottoned on to why her friend was nudging her, and stopped talking just before their teacher entered the room. // We cottoned to our new neighbors right away. See the entry > Examples: “An insatiable reader, he enjoyed a wide range of literary acquaintances, some of whom—Rudyard Kipling, Owen Wister, and Joel Chandler Harris—became personal friends, and others, including Mark Twain (“a man wholly without cultivation”) ... he never quite cottoned to.” — David S. Brown, In the Arena: Theodore Roosevelt in War, Peace, and Revolution, 2025 Did you know? The noun cotton, from the Arabic word quṭun or quṭn, first appeared in English in the 14th century. The substance and the word that named it were soon both culturally prominent, so English did a very English thing to do—it created a verb from the noun. By the late 15th century, cotton could mean “to form a fuzzy or downy surface on (cloth).” This verb sense (as well as other cotton-related verb meanings) is a lexical dust bunny at this point, but our modern-day uses spun from it. By the mid 16th century cotton could mean “to go on prosperously, to develop well, to succeed.” The metaphor is not difficult to see, as cotton cloth with a nice nap has indeed developed well. By the early 17th century, the verb had shifted again, and cottoning was, as it still often is, about taking a liking to someone or something. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that someone who cottoned to or on to something had come to understand it.
Summary