Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 26, 2026 is:





disparate • \DISS-puh-rut\ • adjective

Disparate things are noticeably distinct from one another in quality or character. Disparate can also describe something that contains or is made up of fundamentally different and often incongruous elements.

// The orchestral project joins disparate musical elements to create a truly original sound.

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Examples:

"Some of the spacious galleries feature a single artist ... one is devoted to murals, another to architecture, but many are organized by themes rather than genre, period, place or, and this is important, prestige. Thematic grouping of disparate work has become a popular, though not uncontroversial, trend." — Mary McNamara, The Los Angeles Times, 3 Sept. 2026





Did you know?

If you enjoy sorting different objects into separate categories, you're well prepared to understand the origins of disparate. The word, which first appeared in English in the 16th century, comes from the Latin verb disparāre, meaning "to divide, separate off, make different." Disparāre, in turn, comes from parāre, a verb meaning "to supply, provide, make ready or prepare." Other descendants of parāre in English include both separate and prepare, as well as repair, apparatus, and even the pugnacious vituperate ("to criticize harshly and usually publicly").

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 25, 2026 is:





emissary • \EM-uh-sair-ee\ • noun

Emissary refers to a person who is sent on a mission to represent another person or organization.

// Emissaries from the government are trying to negotiate a settlement.

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Examples:

“Brian [Jones] had enjoyed being in control of the band. He’d arranged their gigs, negotiated their deals, served as their spokesman; he was their emissary with the press, making regular visits to Record Mirror and Melody Maker.” — Bob Spitz, The Rolling Stones: The Biography, 2026





Did you know?

If you’re a big cheese or big kahuna, you may often find yourself too crunched for time to meet face-to-face with your fellow bigwigs, let alone the hoi polloi. In such cases, a good solution is to send out an emissary, someone to act as your representative and shake the necessary hands, grease the necessary palms, etc. The operative phrase here is “send out”; emissary comes from Latin emittere, meaning “to send out.” When emissary was first adopted in the early 17th century, it typically emitted bad vibes (emit also hails from emittere), carrying the implication that the business of an emissary was dishonest or corrupt. But today, that connotation has faded completely, and emissaries are those simply sent to act on someone's behalf.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 24, 2026 is:





puissant • \PWISS-unt\ • adjective

Puissant is a synonym of powerful used to describe something with puissance—that is, strength or power.

// The creatures in her fantasy novel are wielders of puissant magic, able to strike down enemies by harnessing the power of weather phenomena like lightning and tornadoes.

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Examples:

“The show is light on tech, but the accompanying images … pour through as addendums to Felder's puissant passion of Liszt's Liebesträume or Beethoven's Für Elise and land with great effect.” — David John Chávez, The Mercury News (San Jose, California), 1 Feb. 2026





Did you know?

Puissant has some powerful ties to some more commonplace English words. Although puissant has a considerably fancier feel than power and potent, all three words share the same Latin ancestor: posse, a verb meaning “to be able.” Potent came from potent-, potens, a form of posse. Power came to us by way of Anglo-French poer, which itself comes from an alteration of posse. From poer also came the Anglo-French adjective pussant, meaning “able” or “powerful,” and English speakers borrowed that to form puissant in the 15th century.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 23, 2026 is:





asunder • \uh-SUN-der\ • adverb or adjective

Asunder is most often used as an adverb—often with a verb such as tear or rip—to mean "apart" or "into pieces." It is more rarely used as an adjective meaning "apart from each other," as in "standing with legs wide asunder."

// The park was torn asunder by yesterday's microburst, and many of its trails have been blocked by fallen trees.

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Examples:

"We cannot see erosion but we know it happens. [Artist Harrison] Bowe's work is filled with hints of vastness, but he's also pointing to how water might carve a mountain asunder." — Andrew Harper, Hobart Mercury (Australia), 6 Dec. 2025





Did you know?

To get to the root of today’s word, it helps to take it apart and focus on the sunder. You see, asunder comes from the verb sunder, which means "to break apart" or "to become parted, disunited, or severed." Both words come from the Old English word sundor, meaning "apart." The adverbial "into parts" sense of asunder is often used in the phrase "tear asunder," which can be used both literally (as in "fabric torn asunder") and, more often, figuratively (as in "a community torn asunder by the dispute"). The adjectival "apart from each other" sense can be found in the phrase "poles asunder," used to describe two things that are as vastly far apart as the poles of the Earth.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 22, 2026 is:





vocation • \voh-KAY-shun\ • noun

Vocation can refer simply to an occupation, or it can refer to a strong calling to pursue a particular kind of work or course of action.

// Since he was a teenager, he knew that he would find his vocation in marine biology.

// She is headed to medical school to pursue her vocation as a doctor.

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Examples:

“Through her education and her father’s encouragement, she had nurtured a vocation for literature and was determined to make a career for herself in the bundan, Japan’s literary elite …” — Bryan Karetnyk, introduction to Troubled Waters by Higuchi Ichiyō, 2026





Did you know?

When vocation was first used in English in the 15th century it referred specifically to a summons from God to perform a particular task or function in life, especially a religious one. This meaning is no surprise given the word’s source: it comes from the Latin vocation-, vocacio, meaning “summons,” which in turn comes from vocāre, meaning “to call.” Vocation also has a non-religious function in the English language as a word for the strong desire to do a certain kind of work, or as a word for the work itself, making vocation a synonym of the words calling and occupation.