Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

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uncanny
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 10, 2025 is: uncanny • \un-KAN-ee\ • adjective Uncanny is typically used to describe something that is strange or unusual in a way that is surprising or difficult to understand. It can also describe something that seems to have a supernatural character or origin. // The child has an uncanny ability to recognize streets and locations she's seen only once or twice before. // The lights suddenly flickered, and we were both overcome with an eerie, uncanny feeling. See the entry > Examples: "... as Nelson Moultrie walked through the cemetery and observed trees growing in ways that resemble the shapes of people, like one that bore an uncanny resemblance to a pair of legs, she said she's already felt the presence of the people buried there." — Laura Liebman, The Post & Courier (Charleston, South Carolina), 21 Mar. 2025 Did you know? Uncanny describes that which unsettles us, such as disquieting observations, or mysterious situations and circumstances. Strip the word of its prefix, though, and you're left with canny, a word that can be used as a synonym for clever and prudent. While canny and uncanny don't appear to be antonyms, they both come from an early Scots word canny meaning "free from risk; wise, prudent, cautious." And in Scots, canny has for centuries had a secondary meaning more similar to that of its mysterious cousin: the Oxford English Dictionary defines a sense of the word used chiefly in negative constructions (e.g., “not canny”) to describe what is not safe to be involved with, or more broadly, what is not in accordance with what is right or natural, as in "the idea is not canny." Rather uncanny.
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gloss
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 9, 2025 is: gloss • \GLAHSS\ • verb To gloss a word or phrase is to provide its meaning, or in other words, to explain or define it. // Many unfamiliar terms are glossed in the book’s introduction. See the entry > Examples: “It is revealing that early dictionaries regularly defined equality as ‘conformity,’ or glossed the word, like Noah Webster did in 1806, as ‘likeness, evenness, uniformity.’” — Darrin M. McMahon, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1 Apr. 2024 Did you know? If you’re the type of word nerd who finds poring over book glossaries to be the bee’s knees, we know you’ll get a buzz from this gloss of the verb gloss. To gloss something, such as a word or phrase, is to explain or define it. The noun gloss, it follows, refers to (among other things) a brief explanation of a word or expression. And a glossary of course is a collection of textual glosses, or of specialized terms, with their meanings. Both forms of gloss, as well as the word glossary, trace back to the Greek noun glôssa, meaning “tongue,” “language,” or “obscure word requiring explanation.” Another descendent of glôssa, the English noun glossa, refers not to a bee’s knees but to a bee’s tongue, or to the tongue of another insect.
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modicum
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 8, 2025 is: modicum • \MAH-dih-kum\ • noun Modicum is a formal word that means “a small amount.” It is almost always used with of. // The band enjoyed a modicum of success in the early 2010s before becoming an international sensation. See the entry > Examples: “Imagine, for example, that the gods decided to bestow upon Sisyphus a modicum of mercy. The rock, the hill, the never-ending, pointless labor all remained nonnegotiable as far as the gods were concerned, but the mercy of the gods was to change Sisyphus’s attitude to these things. … He is never happier than when rolling large boulders up steep hills, and the gods have offered him the eternal fulfillment of this strange desire.” — Mark Rowlands, The Word of Dog: What Our Canine Companions Can Teach Us About Living a Good Life, 2024 Did you know? It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the English language has more than a modicum of words referring to a small amount of something—it has oodles, from smidgen to soupçon. But while modicum can be applied to countable or physical things (like words or salt) it is almost always applied instead to abstract concepts like respect, success, control, hope, dignity, or privacy. Modicum traces back to the Latin noun modus, meaning “measure,” which just so happens to be the ancestor of more than a modicum of English words, from moderate and modify to mold and commode.
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bumptious
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 7, 2025 is: bumptious • \BUMP-shus\ • adjective Bumptious describes people who are rudely and often noisily confident or over-assertive. It can also be applied to actions or behaviors that show this same attitude. // Our host apologized for the bumptious party guest who caused a scene before being asked to leave. See the entry > Examples: "She comes across as a bumptious, irritating ten-year-old who believes that her main vice, her steam-roller self-confidence, is a virtue." — Lloyd Evans, The Spectator (London), 17 Aug. 2024 Did you know? While evidence dates bumptious to the beginning of the 19th century, the word was uncommon enough decades later that Edward Bulwer-Lytton included the following in his 1850 My Novel: "'She holds her head higher, I think,' said the landlord, smiling. 'She was always—not exactly proud like, but what I calls Bumptious.' 'I never heard that word before,' said the parson, laying down his knife and fork. 'Bumptious indeed, though I believe it is not in the dictionary, has crept into familiar parlance, especially amongst young folks at school and college.'" The word is, of course, now in "the dictionary"; ours notes that it comes from the noun bump and the suffix -tious, echoing other disapproving modifiers including captious ("fault-finding") and fractious ("troublemaking").
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exculpate
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 6, 2025 is: exculpate • \EK-skull-payt\ • verb To exculpate someone is to prove that they are not guilty of doing something wrong. // The editorial expresses confidence that the evidence will exculpate the accused. See the entry > Examples: “Research shows that social-media use is associated with greater narcissism (as well as depression and anxiety).... But it is too easy to exculpate ourselves as a society by pointing to technology and trends we can scarcely control, and young adults may not be in a position to address their avoidant behavior. The rest of us can help.” — Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, 1 June 2023 Did you know? There’s no need to say “my bad” if you’re unfamiliar with exculpate; while the word is far from rare, it is most often encountered in formal writing in reference to the clearing of someone of alleged fault or guilt, as in “they were exculpated of any wrongdoing.” You may be more familiar with a pair of terms that, like exculpate, come from the Latin noun culpa, meaning “blame” or “guilt.” One is the adjective culpable, used to describe someone deserving of condemnation or blame. The other is the Latin phrase mea culpa, which translates directly as “through my fault” and refers to an acknowledgement of personal fault or error that is more formal than, well, “my bad.”
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