Episoder

  • schadenfreude

    schadenfreude

    · Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 4, 2025 is:

    schadenfreude • \SHAH-dun-froy-duh\  • noun

    Schadenfreude refers to a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people.

    // Schadenfreude was felt by many viewers when the arrogant contestant was voted off the show.

    See the entry >

    Examples:

    “In 1995, Sox fans were overjoyed to see the Yankees get knocked out of the playoffs in a thrilling divisional series.... It was Boston schadenfreude, to be sure ...” — Chris Young, The Sun Chronicle (Attleboro, Massachusetts), 13 Sep. 2024

    Did you know?

    Ever a popular lookup on our site, schadenfreude refers to the joy you might feel at another person’s pain. It’s a compound of the German nouns Schaden, meaning “damage,” and Freude, meaning “joy.” Schadenfreude was a favored subject in Germany by the time it was introduced to English in the mid-1800s; discussed by the likes of Schopenhauer, Kant, and Nietzsche, schadenfreude was showing up in psychology books, literature for children, and critical theory. In English, the word was used mostly by academics until the early 1990s, when it was introduced to more general audiences via pop culture. In a 1991 episode of The Simpsons, for example, Lisa explains schadenfreude to Homer, who is gloating at his neighbor’s failure; she also tells him that the opposite of schadenfreude is sour grapes. “Boy,” he marvels, “those Germans have a word for everything.”



  • draconian

    draconian

    · Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 3, 2025 is:

    draconian • \dray-KOH-nee-un\  • adjective

    Draconian describes something (often a law, policy, restriction, etc.) that is very severe or cruel.

    // The editorial criticizes the draconian measures being taken by city hall to rein in spending.

    See the entry >

    Examples:

    “The auras that surround the Sharks and the Hawks are wildly distinct, even if the teams’ records are close to the same. To put it in Chicago terms, one team has the vibe of a Ferris Bueller (plays hooky, joins random parades, chicks dig him)—and the other is, I’m sorry to say, increasingly Principal Rooney–esque (grim faced, tightly wound, represents a draconian institution).” — Katie Baker, The Ringer, 15 Jan. 2025

    Did you know?

    Draconian comes from Drakƍn, the name (later Latinized as Draco) of a 7th-century B.C. Athenian legislator who created a written code of law. Drakƍn’s code was intended to clarify existing laws, but its severity is what made it really memorable. According to the code, even minor offenses were punishable by death, and failure to pay one's debts could result in slavery. Draconian, as a result, is used especially for authoritative actions that are viewed as cruel or harsh.



  • transpire

    transpire

    · Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 2, 2025 is:

    transpire • \tran-SPYRE\  • verb

    Transpire is a formal verb that means “to happen,” or in other words “to take place or occur.” It can also mean “to come to light” or “to become known,” as in “It transpired that they had met previously.” In botany, to transpire is to give off or exude watery vapor especially from the surfaces of leaves.

    // The monument will ensure that posterity will not soon forget the historic events that transpired on that day.

    See the entry >

    Examples:

    “Since that first super-eruption, there have been two more of comparable size, roughly 1.3 million years ago and 630,000 years ago. If this trend continues, with mega-eruptions taking place every 600,000 to 700,000 years, then Yellowstone is due for another major event. But whether it happens tomorrow, in 50,000 years, or never transpires, no one can say.” — Randall K. Wilson, A Place Called Yellowstone: The Epic History of the World’s First National Park, 2024

    Did you know?

    If you’re someone who gets in a sweat over the now-common use of transpire meaning “to occur,” we hope this explainer helps you cool down and breathe easier—it just so happens that the word’s expansion from its technical origins transpired in a logical, or at least understandable, progression over the centuries. Transpire comes from the Latin verb spirare (“to breathe”), which also breathed life into perspire, aspire, and inspire, among other words. Wafting up into English in the late 16th century, transpire was originally used (as it still is) for the action of vapor passing out of the pores of a living membrane such as the skin. From this use followed the related senses of “to become known” and “to be revealed; to come to light” (think of information “leaking” or “slipping out”). Although some usage commentators maintain that these are the only proper figurative uses of transpire, none other than Abigail Adams used it to mean “to happen” in a 1775 letter to her husband (“there is nothing new transpired since I wrote you last”) and Noah Webster recognized the new sense in his dictionary of 1828. Today it is firmly established as standard, occurring widely in published prose.



  • factoid

    factoid

    · Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 1, 2025 is:

    factoid • \FAK-toyd\  • noun

    A factoid is a brief and usually unimportant or trivial fact. Factoid may also refer to an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print.

    // The book is really just a collection of interesting factoids.

    See the entry >

    Examples:

    "Straight from the [Lake Como, Italy] hotel docks, our captain showed us around the various villas and properties dotted around the lake, peppering in some historical and pop-culture factoids, like how the idyllic Villa Balbianello was featured in the Star Wars prequel films." — Nashia Baker, Architectural Digest, 7 Dec. 2024

    Did you know?

    In his 1973 book Marilyn (about Marilyn Monroe), Normal Mailer describes factoids as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion in the Silent Majority." Mailer's use of the -oid suffix (which traces back to the ancient Greek word eidos, meaning "appearance" or "form") follows in the pattern of humanoid: just as a humanoid appears to be human but is not, a factoid appears to be factual but is not. The word has since evolved so that now it most often refers to things that decidedly are facts, just not ones that are significant.



  • cryptic

    cryptic

    · Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 28, 2025 is:

    cryptic • \KRIP-tik\  • adjective

    Something described as cryptic has or seems to have a hidden meaning, or is difficult to understand.

    // The singer posted a cryptic message on her social media accounts, and fans raced to decipher it.

    See the entry >

    Examples:

    "When Neon first met with 'Longlegs' writer-director Osgood Perkins, [chief marketing officer, Christian] Parkes' team pitched a cryptic viral ad campaign that put viewers in the perspective of Maika Monroe's detective. ... 'We give the audience these clues that they can piece together to unlock the mystery of the film,' Parkes explains." — Tim Grierson, The Los Angeles Times, 2 Jan. 2025

    Did you know?

    The history of cryptic starts with krĂœptein, a Greek word meaning "to hide or conceal." Can you uncover other krĂœptein relatives in English? Not surprisingly, crypt, meaning "underground chamber," is one, as is the name of the element krypton. KrĂœptein also gave us several words having to do with secret codes, such as cryptogram ("a communication in cipher or code") and cryptography ("the coding and decoding of secret messages"). And cryptocurrency is currency that exists digitally and that relies on computer encryption (secret code) to prevent counterfeiting and fraud.



  • doff

    doff

    · Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 27, 2025 is:

    doff • \DAHF\  • verb

    To doff a hat or other piece of clothing is to take it off.

    // They doffed their coats when they came inside the house.

    See the entry >

    Examples:

    “On the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco [Oscar] Wilde was introduced to a group of reporters who courteously doffed their hats. Wilde failed to return the gesture, much to the annoyance of one interviewer who used it as a pretext for blasting Wilde in his article.” — Rob Marland, LitHub.com, 11 Mar. 2024

    Did you know?

    Time was, people talked about doffing and donning articles of clothing with about the same frequency. But in the mid-19th century the verb don became significantly more popular and left doff to flounder a bit in linguistic semi-obscurity. Doff and don have been a pair from the start: both date to the 14th century, with doff arising as a Middle English contraction of the phrase “to do off” and don as a contraction of “to do on.” Shakespeare was among the first, as far as we know, to use the word as it’s defined in the more general sense of “to rid oneself of” or “put aside.” He has Juliet give voice to this sense when she says, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet. / 
 Romeo, doff thy name; / And for that name, which is no part of thee, / Take all myself.”



  • ignoramus

    ignoramus

    · Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 26, 2025 is:

    ignoramus • \ig-nuh-RAY-mus\  • noun

    An ignoramus is an utterly ignorant or stupid person.

    // I can't believe they let an ignoramus like that run the company.

    See the entry >

    Examples:

    "The alleged purpose of the [fee] increase was to discourage young people from taking courses that didn't lead to jobs where the demand for workers was great. Predictably, it didn't work. And only an ignoramus would regard an arts degree as of little value." — Ross Gittins, The Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, 7 Aug. 2024

    Did you know?

    Ignoramus is the title of a farce by George Ruggle (1575-1622) that was first produced in 1615. The title character, whose name in Latin literally means "we are ignorant of," is a lawyer who fancies himself to be quite clever but is actually foolish and ignorant. Ruggle may have been inspired in his choice of the name by a proceeding in the English judicial system: the term ignoramus was written on bills of indictment when the evidence presented seemed insufficient to justify prosecution. In these cases ignoramus indicated "we take no notice of (i.e., we do not recognize) this indictment." Such a reference would have been most appropriate for Ruggle's satire of the judiciary.



  • superfluous

    superfluous

    · Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 25, 2025 is:

    superfluous • \soo-PER-floo-us\  • adjective

    Superfluous is a formal word used to describe things that exceed what is necessary or sufficient, or that are simply not needed.

    // Further discussion seems superfluous, given the thorough conversation we just had.

    See the entry >

    Examples:

    “On the final single from his album Manning Fireworks, MJ Lenderman sketches a character study of a man so preoccupied with superfluous status symbols that he finds himself totally isolated from the world.” — Arielle Gordon, Pitchfork, 2 Dec. 2024

    Did you know?

    If, say, you were to go chasing waterfalls in addition to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to, such a pursuit would be superfluous. In other words, you would be exceeding what is necessary to satisfy your need for water-based enjoyment and recreation. “You’ve already got rivers and lakes,” your friends might advise with a bit of TLC, “just stick to them!” “Extra water” is also key to understanding the history of the word superfluous, which entered Middle English from the Latin adjective superfluus, meaning literally “running over.” Superfluus, in turn, comes from the verb superfluere (“to overflow”), which combines the prefix super- (meaning “over”) and fluere, “to flow.” In addition to influencing superfluous, fluere also flowed into the English words affluent, influence, and fluid, among others.



  • quip

    quip

    · Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 24, 2025 is:

    quip • \KWIP\  • noun

    Quip can refer to a clever, usually taunting remark, or to a witty or funny observation or response usually made on the spur of the moment.

    // They traded quips over a beer and laughed themselves silly.

    See the entry >

    Examples:

    "He's always got a story, is always ready with a quip and isn't afraid to let the four-letter words roll off the tongue in the most creative ways." — Nathan Brown, The Indianapolis Star, 26 Apr. 2023

    Did you know?

    To tweak a well-known line from Hamlet, brevity is the soul of quip. While jokes are often brief stories with setups followed by surprising and funny endings (chickens crossing roads, elephant footprints in the butter, etc.) quips are even briefer, and not so planned or scripted. They are more likely to arise naturally in conversation when someone is especially quick-witted, firing off zingers, retorts, or—if you want to get extra fancy about it—bon mots. Brevity also plays a role in quip's etymology: quip is a shortening of quippy, a now-obsolete noun of the same meaning. Quippy's origins are uncertain, but they may lie in the Latin word quippe, meaning "indeed" or "to be sure," which was often used ironically. Quip entered English as a noun in the 1500s, but was verbified within decades; the verb quip means "to make quips" or "to jest or jibe at."



  • tousle

    tousle

    · Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

    Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 23, 2025 is:

    tousle • \TOW-zul\  • verb

    To tousle something is to dishevel it—that is, to make it untidy or unkempt. Tousle is usually, though not always, used specifically when a person’s hair is being so treated.

    // Vic stood in front of the mirror and tousled his hair, trying to get a cool, disheveled look.

    See the entry >

    Examples:

    “One of her hands tousled her long hair, which she wore down, and the other hand hovered in front of her skirt as she hooked a thumb in its waistband. She paired the fashion set with a choker necklace and dangling hoop earrings.” — Meghan Roos, Parade, 21 Mar. 2024

    Did you know?

    The verb tousle today is typically used for the action of mussing someone’s hair playfully (“tousling the toddler’s hair”) or fussily (“tousling her tresses for that just-woke-up look”), but the word’s history is a bit edgier. Tousle and its synonym touse come from -tousen (“to pull or handle roughly”), a frequentative of the Middle English verb touselen. (A frequentative indicates repeated or recurrent action; sniffle, for example, is a frequentative of sniff.) Both tousle and touse have older meanings having to do with rough handling in general; before hair was tousled, people were—ouch. It’s no coincidence that another frequentative of -tousen, the Scots word tussillen, is the ancestor of the English verb tussle, meaning “to scuffle” or “to fight or struggle with someone by grabbing or pushing.”