Episoder
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 30, 2025 is:
audition • \aw-DISH-un\ • noun
An audition is a short performance to show the talents of someone (such as an actor or a musician) who is being considered for a role in a play, a position in an orchestra, etc.
// Auditions will be held next week for the spring musical.
// She had an audition for a small part but ended up landing a starring role.
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Examples:
âWhen she was 18, Hannah DâAmato auditioned for a spot at the Berklee College of Music. Midway through her audition, one of the male judges walked up to her guitar amp and lowered the volume knob. Demoralized and insulted, DâAmato decided to bypass the prestigious institution and start a band on her own. Thus the origin story of Fake Fruit, the Bay Area punk trio sheâs been fronting over several incarnations since 2016.â â Zach Schonfeld, Pitchfork, 23 Aug. 2024
Did you know?
Today, audition most often refers to an artistic performance, but that wasnât always the case. Audition has roots in the Latin verb audÄ«re meaning âto hear,â and was first used in the late 16th century to refer to the power or sense of hearing. AudÄ«re is also the root of such hearing-related words in English as audible (âcapable of being heardâ), audience (which first meant âthe act or state of hearingâ), and the combining form audio-, which appears in various words relating to sound. It wasnât until the late 19th century that the noun audition began being used for an entertainerâs trial performance. And the verb audition, meaning âto test or try out in an audition,â didnât appear on the English language stage until the mid-20th century.
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 29, 2025 is:
facetious • \fuh-SEE-shuss\ • adjective
Facetious is used to describe something, such as a remark or behavior, that is meant to be humorous or funny but is sometimes instead annoying, silly, or improper. It can also be used to describe someone who is joking, often implying that they are doing so inappropriately.
// The emcee delivered several facetious quips throughout the night that the audience found in poor taste.
// I was just being facetiousâI didn't mean it seriously.
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Examples:
"In September, 1818, Byron told Moore of a new undertaking: 'It is called "Don Juan," and is meant to be a little quietly facetious upon every thing. ... I shall try the experiment, anonymously, and if it don't take it will be discontinued.' Safe to say that he continued, taking advantage of that freedom to cram into the poem pretty much anything that came to mind: shipwreck, cannibalism, lobster, cross-dressing, violent slurs upon the Duke of Wellington." â Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 26 Feb. 2024
Did you know?
As many puzzle fans know, facetious is one of a small group of English words that not only use all five vowels once, but use them in alphabetical order. Other members of this exclusive club include abstemious (and abstemiously), and arsenious. (There is also an odd class of words which contain each vowel, used once, in reverse order: Pulmonifera, Muscoidea, and subcontinental.) Facetious comes from the Middle French adjective facetieux, which traces to the Latin word facÄtia, meaning "cleverness or wit." In English, it is used to describe speech or behavior that is intended to be playfully cheeky.
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Manglende episoder?
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 28, 2025 is:
sward • \SWORD\ • noun
Sward is a literary word that refers to an area of land covered with grass.
// The hikers emerged from the forest to find a green sward dotted with yellow and purple flowers stretching out before them.
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Examples:
âA century or so ago, if you lived in the Boston area and were obsessed with trees, you were in good company. The Massachusetts Horticultural Society, which had united enthusiasts of rare apples and ornamental maples since 1832, had helped found Mount Auburn Cemetery and endowed it with an immense, exotic plant collection. ... Tree mania seems to have come late to Greenlawn, however. Photographs taken sometime before 1914 show a bleak, bare sward.â â Veronique Greenwood, The Boston Globe, 18 Dec. 2023
Did you know?
Sward sprouted from the Old English sweard or swearth, meaning âskinâ or ârind.â It was originally used as a term for the skin of the body before being extended to another surfaceâthat of the Earth. The wordâs specific grassy sense dates to the 16th century, and lives on today mostly in novels from centuries past, such as Thomas Hardyâs Tess of the dâUrbervilles: âThe sun was so near the ground, and the sward so flat, that the shadows of Clare and Tess would stretch a quarter of a mile ahead of them, like two long fingers pointing afar to where the green alluvial reaches abutted against the sloping sides of the vale.â
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 27, 2025 is:
edify • \ED-uh-fye\ • verb
To edify someone is to teach them in a way that improves their mind or character.
// The commencement speaker hoped that her words would edify the graduates, and give them hope and encouragement.
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Examples:
"You might be tempted to think that Emerson advocates abandoning all admiration of others. He does not; he simply argues for hardheaded discrimination between what is good and true, and everything else. 'If you are noble, I will love you,' he writes, but 'if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions.' In other words, admire noble, good people, and give your attention only to what edifies and uplifts you." â Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, 20 June 2024
Did you know?
When you edify someone, youâre helping them build character. This figurative "building" is key to understanding the history of edify. This word is an evolution of the Latin verb aedificare, originally meaning "to erect a house" and later (in Late Latin) "to instruct or improve spiritually." (The word edifice, which usually refers to a building and especially to a large or massive structure, comes from the same root.) Aedificare, in turn, is based on aedes, the Latin word for "temple." Edify shares the spiritual meaning of its Late Latin root, but it is also used in general contexts to refer to the act of instructing in a way that improves the mind or character overall.
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 26, 2025 is:
circuitous • \ser-KYOO-uh-tus\ • adjective
If somethingâsuch as a path, route, or journeyâis described as circuitous, it is not straight, short, and direct, but rather takes a circular or winding course. Circuitous can also describe speech or writing that is not said or done simply or clearly.
// He took a circuitous route to town, stopping at several of his favorite shops even though it added minutes and miles to his trip.
// While either method will yield the correct answer, one is far less circuitous and therefore considered superior.
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Examples:
â⊠like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, Ms. Lakey took a circuitous path to open a psychedelic community center. It involved a stint in the Amazon rainforest, a pen-pal in a maximum security federal prison and an auspicious meeting at a sushi restaurant in New Mexico.â â Rachel Nuwer, The New York Times, 8 Oct. 2023
Did you know?
In J. R. R. Tolkienâs The Hobbit, the titular hero Bilbo Baggins takes a circuitous route to the Lonely Mountain, which he helps to reclaim from a monstrous dragon. Although he successfully arrives thereâand returns home againâwe do not use the adjective circuitous to suggest that his path traces a perfect circle. Weâll get straight to it: although both circuitous and its relative circuit share roots in circus, the Latin word for âcircleâ (and ancestor of the English words circle and circus), neither need conjure something shaped like, say, a ring. Just as the noun circuit can refer to an indirect route, circuitous describes routes which can appear circular when mapped, but can also be jagged, squiggly, etc. The point is that a journey such as Bilboâs is not straight, short, or direct, but rather rambling. When used figuratively, circuitous describes something that is not said or done simply and clearly; an example might be a rambling speech about manners in dangerous situations when a direct âNever laugh at live dragonsâ would suffice.
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 25, 2025 is:
nomenclature • \NOH-mun-klay-cher\ • noun
Nomenclature is a formal word that refers to a system of names that is used in specialized fields and especially in science. Nomenclature is also used more broadly as a synonym of name and designation.
// It took Faith, a trained herpetologist, a while to become familiar with the nomenclature used at the entomology conference.
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Examples:
âThe junior leagues wanted to instill the same type of nomenclature and methods used at the high school varsity level and teach the same type of philosophies.â â Rodger Roeser, Cleveland.com, 25 Nov. 2024
Did you know?
Nomenclature has everything to do with names: it can refer to the act of naming, a name itself, and even a system of namesâyou name it! The term comes to English from the Latin word nĆmenclÄtĆ«ra, which means âassigning of names to things.â One may marvel, for instance, at the nomenclatureâthat is, namesâof towns in the United States, from Ninety-Six (South Carolina) to Frankenstein (Missouri). Or one may be required to learn the nomenclatureâthe system of namingâof a particular branch of science. If nomenclature reminds you of a term you heard in biology class, you know what we mean. Binomial nomenclature refers to a system of nomenclature in which each species of animal or plant receives a name of two terms, of which the first identifies the genus to which it belongs and the second the species itself. For example, the scientific name for humans according to this nomenclature is Homo sapiens.
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 24, 2025 is:
divers • \DYE-verz\ • adjective
Divers is an adjective meaning "numbering more than one."
// The tri-county fair offers divers amusements for the whole family.
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Examples:
"'These prizes reflect the diversity of this year's edition,' NIFFF [Neuchatel Intâl Fantastic Film Festival] artistic director Pierre-Yves Walder tells Variety. 'Our festival showcases the fantastic in all its forms, promoting divers styles, points of view, themes, and aestheticsâand I think these winners really show as much.'" â Ben Croll, Variety, 9 July 2022
Did you know?
Divers is not a misspelling of diverseâit is a word in its own right. Both adjectives come from Latin diversus, meaning "turning in opposite directions," and both historically could be pronounced as either DYE-verz (like the plural of the noun diver) or dye-VERSS. Divers (now pronounced more frequently as DYE-verz) is typically used before a plural noun to indicate an unspecified quantity ("a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments" â Jane Eyre); it's a rather formal word and not commonly encountered. Diverse (usually dye-VERSS) is frequently called upon to emphasize variety. It means either "dissimilar" or "unlike" (as in "a variety of activities to appeal to the children's diverse interests") or "made up of people or things that are different from each other" (as in "a diverse student body").
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 23, 2025 is:
wanderlust • \WAHN-der-lust\ • noun
Wanderlust refers to a strong desire to travel.
// During their final semester at college, the two friends were both filled with an insatiable wanderlust and began planning a journey to Patagonia together.
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Examples:
"In a few weeks, Ortega explained in a quiet moment, the Red Desert herd would begin its annual pilgrimage toward summer range. ... Some were homebodies, wandering only a few dozen miles. Others, as Hall Sawyer had shown, would trek 150 miles. And one legendary doe, Deer 255, ditched her herdmates and pressed onâup to the Gros Ventre Range, along the shores of Jackson Lake, and across the Snake River, all the way to Idaho. Was this mere wanderlust or part of a broader survival strategy?" â Ben Goldfarb, Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, 2023
Did you know?
"For my part," writes Robert Louis Stevenson in Travels with a Donkey in the CĂ©vennes, "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 wander, hike, or stray" and Lust means "pleasure" or "desire."
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 22, 2025 is:
opine • \oh-PYNE\ • verb
To opine is to express an opinion about something.
// Many people opine that social media platforms should be better regulated.
See the entry >
Examples:
âEntertainment will always be inherently social. This latest age has prompted society to take a page out of video game culture, which has long relied on building a digital community. We text those we care about after a cliffhanger season finale and jump on social media to opine on the latest movie or show, sharing views on the best scenes or even recording oneself watching an intense scene for posting on social media.â â Geir Skaaden, Variety, 28 Aug. 2024
Did you know?
We are not opiningâthat is, expressing our opinionâwhen we say that opine is not a back-formation of opinion, though the two words do share a common ancestry. A back-formation is a word formed by the subtraction of part of an existing word; for instance, the verb bartend is a back-formation of the noun bartender. Opine and opinion, however, both entered English independently, taking different routes from their mutual roots in the Latin verb opÄ«nÄrÄ«, meaning âto have in mindâ or âto think.â Opinion arrived in the 14th century, while opine followed about a century later.
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 21, 2025 is:
gourmand • \GOOR-mahnd\ • noun
A gourmand is a person who loves and appreciates good food and drink. Gourmand can also refer to someone who enjoys eating and drinking to excess.
// He was a gourmand who retired to New Orleans to live close to the cuisine he loved best.
See the entry >
Examples:
"... the deck sports a dining area with a barbecue and pizza oven for gourmands." â Rachel Cormack, Robb Report, 27 Oct. 2023
Did you know?
When gourmand first appeared in English texts in the 15th century, it was no compliment: gourmand was a synonym of glutton that was reserved for a greedy eater who consumed well past the point of satiation. The wordâs negative connotation mostly remained until English speakers borrowed the similar-sounding (and much more positive) gourmet from French in the 17th century to describe a connoisseur of food and drink. Since then, while the original, unflattering sense of gourmand has remained, it has picked up an additional, softer sense referring to someone who appreciates, and has a hearty appetite for, the pleasures of the table. More recently, gourmand has expanded beyond cuisine and into the world of perfumery: fragrances that evoke edible pleasures are called "gourmands."
