Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

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improvident
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 9, 2025 is: improvident • \im-PRAH-vuh-dunt\ • adjective Improvident is a formal word used to describe something that does not foresee or provide for the future, especially with regard to money. An improvident relationship, habit, or practice is financially unwise or impractical. // The directors were blasted at the committee hearing for their improvident use of public money. See the entry > Examples: “The problem is worst in affluent countries like the U.S., where more than two hundred pounds of food per person get thrown away each year. ‘Even modest food waste reductions would translate into considerable cumulative savings,’ Smil observes. Then, there’s the waste that results from improvident eating habits. If photosynthesis has a low conversion rate, feeding crops to animals compounds the problem many times over.” — Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 23 June 2025 Did you know? Improvident describes someone’s actions or habits as being unwise with regard to saving or providing for the future. It’s a formal word, but the behavior it describes is well illustrated by many of the stories people hear or read as children, including some of the world’s oldest. In Aesop’s fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” the grasshopper could certainly be called improvident—he spends all summer singing and dancing while the ant works hard to prepare for winter by storing food, and at the end of the short tale is cold and starving. While today improvident is used mostly in the context of money, and those who are irresponsible with it, one can be improvident with other things (such as time or food), even happily. In another children’s tale, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, author Beatrix Potter introduces the titular family of bunnies, sleepy from eating too much lettuce, as follows: “they were very improvident and cheerful.”
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bromide
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 8, 2025 is: bromide • \BROH-myde\ • noun A bromide is a statement intended to make someone feel happier or calmer, but too dull and unoriginal to be effective. // Their speech had nothing more to offer than the usual bromides about how everyone needs to work together. See the entry > Examples: “According to the old bromide, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. My grandfather, who had limited formal education but a wealth of common sense, countered that with, ‘Just water and fertilize your own grass. After all, it’s your grass and you are in charge of how it grows! Besides, that other stuff may be nothing but AstroTurf.’” — Rodger Dean Duncan, Forbes, 4 Sept. 2024 Did you know? A bromide is a statement so worn and trite as to be ineffective when it’s offered to make someone feel better. Before the sigh-inducing type, though, bromides were most familiar in compounds like potassium bromide, used in the late 19th century as a sedative to treat everything from epilepsy to sleeplessness. (The chemical element bromine had been discovered in 1826.) Such compounds fell from use with the invention of barbiturates in the early 20th century, around the same time that the word bromide started to be applied to anything or anyone dull enough to make one drowsy.
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vamoose
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 7, 2025 is: vamoose • \vuh-MOOSS\ • verb Vamoose is an informal word that means "to depart quickly." // With the sheriff hot on their tails, the bank robbers knew they had better vamoose. See the entry > Examples: "... I spotted the culprit, a young racoon, attempting to dislodge one of my feeders. Caught in the act, he ran for his life when I opened the window and told him to vamoose." — Margaret Haylock Capon, The Picton County Weekly News (Ontario, Canada), 19 June 2025 Did you know? In the 1820s and '30s, the American Southwest was rough-and-tumble territory—the true Wild West. English-speaking cowboys, Texas Rangers, and gold prospectors regularly rubbed elbows with Spanish-speaking vaqueros in the local saloons, and a certain amount of linguistic intermixing was inevitable. One Spanish term that caught on with English speakers was vamos, which means "let's go." Cowpokes and dudes alike adopted the word, at first using a range of spellings and pronunciations that varied considerably in their proximity to the original Spanish form. But when the dust settled, the version most American English speakers were using was vamoose.
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conciliatory
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 6, 2025 is: conciliatory • \kun-SILL-yuh-tor-ee\ • adjective Something described as conciliatory is intended to reduce hostility or to gain favor or goodwill. // As the customer’s voice rose, the manager adopted a soothing, conciliatory tone and promised that the situation would be remedied. See the entry > Examples: “When I was younger, and my father found me in bed after my mother had said or done something to send me there, he would sit for a moment by my feet and tell me, in an awkward, conciliatory way, that it wasn’t my mother’s fault. She was sad, and worried, and she had been sad and worried for a long time, so I had to try harder to be a good, thoughtful child.” — Farah Ali, The River, The Town: A Novel, 2025 Did you know? If you are conciliatory toward someone, you’re trying to win that person over to your side, usually by making them less angry. The verb conciliate was borrowed into English in the mid-16th century and descends from the Latin verb conciliare, meaning “to assemble, unite, or win over.” Conciliare, in turn, comes from the noun concilium, meaning “assembly” or “council.” Conciliatory, which appeared in English a bit later in the 16th century, also traces back to conciliare, and is used especially to describe things like tones, gestures, and approaches intended to turn someone’s frown upside down. Another word that has conciliare as a root is reconcile, the earliest meaning of which is “to restore to friendship or harmony.”
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lout
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 5, 2025 is: lout • \LOUT\ • noun A lout is an awkward brutish person. // It was difficult for us to focus on the movie due to the noise coming from the group of louts seated in front of us. See the entry > Examples: “Fortunately for Vince, Jake is about to sell their mother’s house, and the proceeds should cover his deep debts. As is often the case with ne’er-do-wells, however, Vince doesn’t make anything easy, and [actor Jason] Bateman casts him as an arrogant lout ... who’s always playing the angles to his own benefit, damn the damage he causes to everyone else.” — Nick Schager, The Daily Beast, 18 Sept. 2025 Did you know? Lout belongs to a large group of words that we use to indicate a particular sort of offensive and insensitive person, that group also including such terms as boor, oaf, jerk, and churl. English speakers have used lout in this way since the mid-1500s. Well before the 12th century, however, lout functioned as a verb with the meaning “to bow in respect.” No one is quite sure how—or even if—the verb sense developed into a noun meaning “an awkward brutish person.” The noun could have been coined independently, but if its source was the verb, perhaps the awkward posture of one bowing down led over the centuries to the idea that the bowing person was base and awkward as well.
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