Podcasts about merriam webster

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 15, 2026 is: tenuous • TEN-yoo-us • adjective Something described as tenuous is flimsy, weak, or uncertain. // The theater had a tenuous existence for years, but today is on much more solid financial footing. See the entry > Examples: “While more non-screen-based interactive technology could be an antidote to our screen-obsessed society, it's an extremely tenuous link to more human interaction ...” — Jennifer Pattinson Tuohy, The Verge, 4 May 2026 Did you know? Lean into the history of tenuous and you'll find that the word comes to English from the Latin adjective tenuis, meaning “fine-drawn, thin, narrow, or slight,” and is a relative of thin. Like that more familiar word, tenuous has a wide array of meanings: it can describe a literal thinness, as in “a silkworm's tenuous threads,” or rarity (the opposite of density), as in “a tenuous fluid,” or it can describe things that are figuratively thin or flimsy. If one team in a game has a tenuous lead, either team still has a chance at winning. If there is only a tenuous connection between two events, those events are likely unrelated.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 14, 2026 is: emblazon • im-BLAY-zun • verb To emblazon something is to decorate its surface, usually with a name, slogan, or picture. // Her favorite souvenir from her trip to the Grand Canyon was a t-shirt emblazoned with a rosy sunset over the famous chasm. See the entry > Examples: “Later that week we were boarding our flight with the painting secured in an enormous case with a toothy, bespectacled cartoon squirrel emblazoned on the back and a speech bubble that read ‘I'M JUST NUTS ABOUT PUZZLES!'” — Orlando Whitfield, All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art, 2025 Did you know? Blazon is a less commonly used synonym of the more familiar coat of arms. Both centuries-old terms refer to heraldic designs, symbols, and other imagery (think crosses, lions, stripes, etc.) that typically appear on banners, shields, armor, and elsewhere. The verb form of blazon meaning “to depict heraldic figures or designs in drawing or engraving” and emblazon, “to inscribe or adorn with or as if with heraldic figures or designs,” came into use around the same time in the late 1500s, from the French spoken in medieval England. (The word heraldry, also ultimately from Anglo-French, came into use then too.) Emblazon still refers to marking something with an emblem of heraldry, but it is now more often used for adorning or publicizing something in any conspicuous way, whether with eye-catching decoration or colorful words of praise.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 13, 2026 is: hale • HAIL • adjective Someone described as hale is in good and often exceptional health. Hale is commonly used in the phrase "hale and hearty." // Their mother remains hale and hearty in her old age. See the entry > Examples: "Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell star [in the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes] as two vivacious all-American showgirls whose friendship is as fast as their attitudes to men are poles apart. Whereas Monroe's Lorelei Lee prizes wealth and devotion in a suitor, Russell's Dorothy Shaw is more inclined towards the hale and hunky ..." — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph (United Kingdom), 2 May 2026 Did you know? English has two hale homographs: the adjective that is frequently paired with hearty to describe those healthy and strong, and the somewhat uncommon verb that has to do with literal or figurative hauling or pulling. (One can hale a boat onto shore, or hale a person into a courtroom with the aid of legal ramifications for resistance.) The verb comes from the Middle English halen (also the root of our word haul), but the adjective has a bifurcated origin, with two Middle English terms identified as sources: hale and hail. Both of those come from words meaning "healthy," the former from the Old English hāl, and the latter from the Old Norse heill. The Middle English hail is also the source of the three modern English words spelled as hail, the verb, interjection, and noun that have to do with greeting.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 12, 2026 is: blandishment • BLAN-dish-munt • noun Blandishments are nice things that you say or do to convince someone to do something. Blandishment is usually used in the plural form. // Despite the many blandishments of the dressing room attendant, we were resolved not to overspend at the fashion boutique. See the entry > Examples: “… he sought to turn the attack around by saying his vast wealth—which has allowed him to richly fund his political endeavors—made him immune to the blandishments of plutocrats and corporate interests.” — Mark Z. Barabak, The Los Angeles Times, 23 Feb. 2026 Did you know? When Star Wars audiences first meet former smuggler Lando Calrissian—played iconically by Billy Dee Williams—in The Empire Strikes Back, he is full of blandishments, offering flattery (telling Leia “You truly belong here with us among the clouds”) and gifts to our heroes in the form of food and drink (“Will you join me for a little refreshment?”) in order to entice them into what we soon discover is a trap. Notably, before the whole sordid deal goes down (and before Lando's eventual redemption), Han Solo calls him “an old smoothie.” Lando's verbal smoothness can be linked to blandishment too: the word was formed from the verb blandish, meaning “to coax with flattery.” Blandish ultimately comes from the Latin adjective blandus, meaning “influencing others by flattery,” source too of our adjective bland, which typically describes things boring and flavorless but which can also mean “smooth and soothing in manner or quality”—a meaning that also applies to everyone's favorite Cloud City administrator.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 11, 2026 is: saturnine • SAT-er-nyne • adjective Saturnine is a literary word that typically describes people who are glum and grumpy, or things that suggest or express gloom. It can also mean “slow to act or change.” // A walk in the sunshine can improve your mood significantly, raising the spirits of even the most saturnine among us. See the entry > Examples: “If he was once more cautious in interviews, coming across as a little saturnine, he's looser now, illuminated by flashes of wry humour.” — Patrick Smith, The Independent (United Kingdom), 1 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Saturnine is far—even astronomically far—from the cheeriest of words. It has a long history of describing the glum and grouchy among us, and comes ultimately from Sāturnus, name of the Roman god of agriculture, who was often depicted as a bent old man with a stern, sluggish, and sullen nature. Saturn, the ringed gas giant that is one of five planets visible to the naked eye, is of course the namesake of Sāturnus, and Saturn does indeed seem to dawdle; it requires over 29 of our Earth years to orbit the sun. The ancient Romans (like some astrologers today) believed those who are born when Saturn is rising in the sky tend toward being a Gloomy Gus or Debbie Downer. We don't know A. A. Milne's take on the influence of Saturn, but his gloomy, cynical gray donkey Eeyore is famously saturnine, a fact Eeyore himself would surely stoically accept as true if it were pointed out to him.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 10, 2026 is: foible • FOY-bul • noun Foibles are minor flaws or shortcomings in someone's character or behavior. In fencing, foible refers to the weakest part of a sword's blade, between the middle and point. // You have to be able to laugh at your own foibles. See the entry > Examples: "The British sketch comedy troupe Monty Python loved taking aim at contemporary foibles through its twisted and liberal reading of history." — David Faris, The Week, 29 Apr. 2026 Did you know? Many word lovers agree that the pen is mightier than the sword. But be they honed in wit or form, even the sharpest tools in the shed have their flaws. That's where foible comes in handy. Borrowed from French in the 1600s, the word originally referred to the weakest part of a fencing sword, that part being the portion between the middle and the pointed tip. The English foible soon came to be applied not only to weaknesses in blades but also to minor failings in character. Foible ultimately traces back to the Old French term feble, which is also the source of our English adjective feeble.

If you've ever walked out of a doctor's office feeling dismissed, confused, or like something just didn't add up, this episode is for you. In this conversation, we're pulling back the curtain on something most people never stop to examine: the difference between science itself and the human biases, financial interests, and worldviews that shape how science gets used. As a registered nurse with over 17 years inside the pharmaceutical industry, I've seen this pattern up close. And as a Christian woman, I believe this is one of the biggest blind spots in the church today. This episode is for the Christian woman who is tired of being told to simply trust the system, who senses that something deeper is going on, and who is ready to bring discernment and faith into every health decision she makes. --- The Real Threat to Your Health May Not Be What You Think We live in a culture that shuts down questions with slogans. Question the consensus and you're labeled ignorant. But here's what Merriam-Webster actually says science is: systematized knowledge that may be studied or learned. Why would anyone be against learning? Science in and of itself is not the problem. The problem is the human bias, financial agenda, and worldview behind some of the science. When evaluating any study or health claim, wise questions to ask include: - Who ran the experiment? - Who funded it? - How many people were included? - What does the researcher stand to gain? - What worldview is shaping the interpretation? A perfect study does not exist. And even if it did, the conclusions drawn from it would still pass through a human filter. --- Worldview Shapes Everything, Even in the Lab To illustrate how a scientist's worldview affects their conclusions, consider Charles Darwin, widely taught as the father of evolutionary theory. A Princeton University article titled "The Descent of Man, 150 Years On," published in the journal Science, documents that Darwin described indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia as lesser than Europeans, referred to African peoples as cognitively inferior, and characterized women as less capable than white men. His worldview was deeply racist and sexist, and it shaped his science. This is not an isolated example. It is a pattern. --- We've Been Wrong Before. More Than Once. Throughout history, the cultural and medical consensus has been confidently wrong: - Margarine was promoted as a heart-healthy butter alternative - Cigarette smoking was endorsed by medical doctors as safe or even beneficial - All dietary fat was declared the enemy - Kellogg's cereal was marketed as a complete, healthy breakfast - Formula was pushed as superior to breast milk - Giving birth on your back in a hospital was presented as the only safe option These were not fringe ideas. They were mainstream consensus backed by experts. And they were wrong. --- The Brainwashing Goes Beyond Health The same pattern shows up across every area of culture. We've been conditioned to believe that delaying marriage and children is the sophisticated choice, that divorce is self-care, that pornography is harmless, that sexual identity is the foundation of human identity, and that children and the elderly are burdens rather than blessings. Each of these ideas contradicts both scripture and human flourishing. When we can see the pattern clearly in culture, we become better equipped to recognize it in healthcare too. --- Why the Church Has a Blind Spot Here Many believers view the medical system as conflict-free and the science as settled. But if the enemy can convince us to put harmful things into our bodies while calling it health, he can do significant damage without ever being noticed. This is not a call to throw out the entire medical system. It is a call to bring the same discernment to your healthcare decisions that you bring to every other area of your faith. Seeking God's wisdom first for your health is not anti-science. It is stewardship. --- Timestamped Highlights - 0:01 - What if the real threat to your health is assuming the consensus is always correct? - 0:29 - Why questioning science gets mislabeled as ignorance - 1:26 - The right questions to ask about any study or health claim - 2:22 - Darwin's worldview and what it reveals about how science gets interpreted - 3:48 - A cultural history of things we were confidently told that turned out to be wrong - 5:12 - How the same brainwashing pattern shows up in marriage, sexuality, and family - 6:37 - Why this is a blind spot in the church and why it matters for holistic health - 7:08 - The real goal: not to reject the system, but to question it wisely --- Key Takeaways - Science is a tool. Like any tool, its value depends entirely on who is using it and why. - Financial interests and personal worldview shape scientific conclusions, sometimes significantly. - History shows us repeatedly that the consensus can be wrong. Discernment is not ignorance. - The church is not immune to cultural and industrial influence when it comes to health. - Seeking God's wisdom for your health is an act of faith, not fear. - You do not have to choose between faith and informed health decisions. You were made for both. --- Ready to Take the Next Step? If today's episode made you think twice about what you've been told, go grab my free training, Eight Myths That Are Keeping You Sick Right Now, at herholistichealing.com/free. A credentialed RN and pharma insider walks you through what conventional medicine keeps getting wrong, and what to do instead.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 9, 2026 is: deleterious • del-uh-TEER-ee-us • adjective Deleterious is a word used in formal speech and writing to describe something that is damaging or harmful, usually in a subtle or unexpected way. // Though effective at keeping pests away from plants, the spray is no longer used because of its deleterious effects on the respiratory system. See the entry > Examples: “Canceling email addresses used by alumni over many years could have deleterious consequences for professional networking, which will become increasingly important as the AI roll-out accelerates and disrupts careers for thousands of college graduates.” — William Golz, NOLA.com (New Orleans, Louisiana), 15 Apr. 2026 Did you know? When you hold down the delete key on your keyboard or touchscreen, the effect—whoosh!—is instantaneous. Deleterious effects, however, are often not so obvious; deleterious (ultimately from a Greek word meaning “to hurt”) is used to describe things that are harmful in ways that are unexpected, slow-acting, or not readily apparent. Although most often used in formal speech and writing, deleterious is far from rare. It even pops up from time to time in film and television, especially from the mouths of wonky characters, as when Seven of Nine warns the Doctor in an episode of Star Trek Voyager, “The nebula is having a deleterious effect on all the ship's technology,” or when Higgins exclaims in the original Magnum P.I. series, “It's shocking what a deleterious effect a regimen of nothing but mushrooms can have on a man.” We'll take your word for it, Higgins.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 8, 2026 is: accoutrement • uh-KOO-truh-munt • noun An accoutrement is a piece of clothing or equipment that is used in a particular place or for a particular activity. In military contexts, accoutrement refers specifically to a soldier's outfit. The word can also refer to an identifying and often superficial characteristic or device. Accoutrement in any of its uses is often pluralized. // They have all the accoutrements that a baker could ever want, including a robust collection of cookie cutters and a veritable wardrobe of vintage aprons. See the entry > Examples: "From the spectacularly colorful Parade of Flags ... to the customary dress and cultural accoutrements of the nations, we see just how rich, varied and wonderful are the backgrounds of these students who have traveled far to study among us." – The Commercial Dispatch (Columbus, Mississippi), 14 Apr. 2026 Did you know? Accoutrement and its rarer relative accoutre, a verb meaning "to provide with equipment or furnishings" or "to outfit," have been appearing in English texts since the 16th century. Today both words have variant spellings—accouterment and accouter, respectively. The pair's French ancestor, accoutrer, descends from an Old French word meaning "to put in place" and may ultimately trace back to the Latin word consuere, meaning "to sew together." Some etymological stitching is visible in another English word: couture, a word referring to the business of making fashionable clothes, as well as to the clothes themselves, is a direct French borrowing that ultimately descends from consuere.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 7, 2026 is: MacGyver • muh-GHYE-ver • verb To MacGyver something is to make, form, or repair it with materials that are conveniently on hand. // Social media websites are full of videos that show people MacGyvering everything from a life jacket out of a pair of pants to a stove using three metal cans and some dirt. See the entry > Examples: “Maybe your shovel broke the first time you tried to clear wet, heavy snow off your sidewalk and you never replaced it. ... Of course, before you start MacGyvering a shovel from spare parts in your garage, you can ask a neighbor for assistance or make a few phone calls and pay for a service to clear your driveway or sidewalks.” — Caroline Anschutz, SlashGear.com, 28 Jan. 2026 Did you know? Angus MacGyver, as portrayed by actor Richard Dean Anderson in the titular, action-packed television series MacGyver, was many things—including a secret agent, a Swiss Army knife enthusiast, and a convert to vegetarianism—but he was no MacGuffin (a character that keeps the plot in motion despite lacking intrinsic importance). In fact, so memorable was this man, his mullet, and his ability to use whatever was available to him—often simple things, such as a paper clip, chewing gum, or a rubber band—to escape a sticky situation or to make a device to help him complete a mission, that people began associating his name with making quick fixes or finding innovative solutions to immediate problems. Hence the verb MacGyver, a slang term meaning to “make, form, or repair (something) with what is conveniently on hand.” After years of steadily increasing and increasingly varied usage following the show's run from 1985 to 1992 (tracked in some detail here), MacGyver was added to our online dictionary in 2022.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 6, 2026 is: valedictory • val-uh-DIK-tuh-ree • adjective Valedictory describes something expressing or containing a farewell. // The valedictory speech given by the department chair moved several faculty members to tears. See the entry > Examples: “Did I regret not catching a retrospective showing of ‘Little Miss Sunshine,' in a special valedictory program of Sundance sensations from over the years? Perhaps—though not as much as I regretted missing the screening of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's ‘Half Nelson' (2006). That's the title that I remember most fondly from my first year at Sundance ...” — Justin Chang, The New Yorker, 31 Jan. 2026 Did you know? Valedictory addresses delivered by valedictorians at high school and college graduations are as much a sign of spring in the United States as baseball games and cookouts. Though we don't know where the first valedictory address was given, we do know that such addresses were an institution at some colleges in the U.S. by the time Noah Webster wrote his famous 1828 dictionary. (We also know that valedictory was used in non-academic settings—mostly churches, and especially in the phrase “valedictory sermon”—from the mid-1600s.) Since a valedictory speech is given at the end of an academic career, it is perfectly in keeping with the meaning of its Latin ancestor, valedīcere, which means “to say goodbye.”

Norah is visiting Tucson this week, so she has stopped by the studio to procure some Mango affection (via bribery) and make an appearance on the podcast! They were planning on doing a different word initially, but they are keeping it in the same wheelhouse to make a distinction between the two words—often used as synonyms. After a quick introduction where Ben talks about the game review code he received for the recent port of the N64 game Glover, Norah and Ben discuss their thoughts on the differences between retro and vintage, antique and vintage collections or items, and educational techniques that aren't keeping pace with technological advancements. To close out the show, they share their Disneyland and Disney World experiences and critique a blog post about some historical menu items served at the parks. *** 00:00:20 - Hand gestures, cats with false teeth, nephews and book fairs, and Norah on-brand 00:03:15 - A line-segment of proofreaders, balls and gloves, and refurbishing “antique” games 00:07:08 - An unfortunate distinction, ball metamorphosis, a platformer relic, and ideas of fun 00:10:55 - Clash of the Titans, games out of time, Norah's surprise, and everyone's favorite ox 00:13:31 - Rifles in Indiana, items of high quality, wine diagrams, and hipsters or vino snobs 00:16:25 - Sommeliers, roasty coffee, Merriam-Webster chaser, and pondering the differences 00:20:41 - Literal organic word growth, the quality debate, art is neither, and Norah is an astute  00:25:52 - Coffins and ashes, collecting heirlooms, hobbies versus investments, and hipsters 00:29:16 - Antique educational methods, vaccines (NOT leeches), other ideas, and typewriters 00:34:04 - Vintage foods, impossible pies, Disney anecdotes, Ben's favorite ride, and Epcot 00:38:34 - Listing food items, an historic chili cook-off, making Norah sick, and futuristic pies 00:42:53 - Not very pirate-ish, sea chicken sandwiches, an ill-advised pun, and unsurprising 00:45:34 - ACTUAL vintage foods, mincemeat pie, Spam dishes, arcade cabinets, and Pong 00:49:32 - Atari impact, do not eat the aunt, misgendered Mango, and inspired to be difficult  *** Follow Andrew / Partly Robot Industries on… His website: https://partlyrobot.com/ On Instagram: https://instagram.com/partlyrobot On TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@partlyrobot On Substack: https://partlyrobot.substack.com/ On Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/partlyrobot.com On Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/partlyrobot On Microcosm Publishing: https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/artist/andrew-coltrin On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/partlyrobot And his TREE o' LINKS: http://linktr.ee/partlyrobot Follow Two Vague on… Our website: https://www.twovaguepodcast.com On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/two_vague_podcast On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@twovaguepodcast On Substack: https://twovaguepodcast.substack.com/ On Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/twovaguepodcast.com For show appearance and other inquiries, contact us at: twovaguepodcast@gmail.com For all of your PRI and 2VP merch, check out the Partly Robot Industries store at TEEPUBLIC! https://www.teepublic.com/user/partly-robot-industries Please consider helping Andrew out with a pledge for Nerd Emergencies... And Other Misunderstandings: A Comix Showcase of Neurodivergent Perspectives, his latest zine offering featuring the creative comic musings of dozens of neurodivergent artists and allies: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/partlyrobot/nerd-emergencies  *** References, Links, and Tags Check out all of the vintage console game offerings (including Glover) at the Piko Interactive website: https://www.pikointeractive.com/home/PIKO-Online-Store-c33087521 Glover (QUByte Classics) trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26WM8bODn8g #Podbean #DIYPodcast #ApplePodcast #VideoGames #Trivia #Comedy #Talkshow #2VP #TwoVaguePodcast #PodernFamily #InterviewShow #GamersofThreads #Gamer #PartlyRobot #PartlyRobotIndustries #TeePublic #MicrocosmPublishing #Kickstarter #NerdEmergencies #PikoInteractive #Glover #QUByteClassics

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 5, 2026 is: interloper • in-ter-LOH-per • noun An interloper is a person who intrudes in a place or sphere of activity; they are not wanted or welcome by the other people present. // Summer residents were regarded as interlopers who lacked a commitment to the town's welfare. See the entry > Examples: "... my garden is wildlife friendly, sometimes too friendly. By not being overly concerned about interlopers, it welcomes birds and bugs now, including beneficial insects. They help keep things in balance. Not so welcome are rabbits, but they still find their way in." — David Hobson, The Waterloo (Ontario) Region Record, 16 Apr. 2026 Did you know? If you keep chickens, a coyote loping around in the vicinity of your coop is not welcome. You'd be justified, both semantically and etymologically, in calling such a coyote an interloper. The -loper part of interloper shares an ancestor with the Old English verb hlēapan, meaning "to leap," and the Dutch verb lopen, meaning "to run." (The verb lope does too.) The prefix inter- means "between" or "among," so an interloper is essentially one that leaps in among others (for example, a flock of hens) without an invitation to do so. Interloper made itself at home among English speakers in the late 1500s; the verb interlope, which arrived close in tow in the early 1600s, is likely a back-formation.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 4, 2026 is: redolent • RED-uh-lunt • adjective As a synonym of aromatic, the word redolent can describe something that has a noticeable smell without specifying the scent, but more often it is accompanied by of or with and means “full of a specified fragrance,” as in “redolent with incense.” Redolent can also describe something that causes thoughts or memories of something, as in “music redolent of the 1980s.” // The late-spring meadow was redolent of wildflowers and petrichor. See the entry > Examples: “The store is redolent with the aroma of warm chocolate and an ambience evoking the agricultural roots of cacao with plants and growing tunnels.” — Robert Channick, The Chicago Tribune, 13 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Redolent traces back to the Latin verb olēre (“to smell”) and is a relative of olfactory, “of, relating to, or connected with the sense of smell.” In its earliest English uses in the 15th century, redolent simply meant “having an aroma.” Today, it usually applies to a place or thing permeated with odors. Scent and memory are famously linked, and an extended use of redolent to mean “evocative” or “suggestive” links them again, as in “lollipops redolent of childhood.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 4, 2026 is: redolent • RED-uh-lunt • adjective As a synonym of aromatic, the word redolent can describe something that has a noticeable smell without specifying the scent, but more often it is accompanied by of or with and means “full of a specified fragrance,” as in “redolent with incense.” Redolent can also describe something that causes thoughts or memories of something, as in “music redolent of the 1980s.” // The late-spring meadow was redolent of wildflowers and petrichor. See the entry > Examples: “The store is redolent with the aroma of warm chocolate and an ambience evoking the agricultural roots of cacao with plants and growing tunnels.” — Robert Channick, The Chicago Tribune, 13 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Redolent traces back to the Latin verb olēre (“to smell”) and is a relative of olfactory, “of, relating to, or connected with the sense of smell.” In its earliest English uses in the 15th century, redolent simply meant “having an aroma.” Today, it usually applies to a place or thing permeated with odors. Scent and memory are famously linked, and an extended use of redolent to mean “evocative” or “suggestive” links them again, as in “lollipops redolent of childhood.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 3, 2026 is: engender • in-JEN-der • verb Engender is a formal word that means “to be the source or cause of something.” // Our monthly book club meetings started as a way to connect and ended up being a great place to engender unity and build life-long friendships. See the entry > Examples: “... ‘During a moment defined by anti-intellectualism, escapism, and AI tools that let you skip cognitive work entirely ... intellectual creators are doing something kinda countercultural,' says Death To Stock's culture researcher Agus Panzoni. These influencers, who have already built established communities around intellectual pursuits, hold greater meaning and engender more trust ...” — Markiel Magsalin, Vogue, 15 Apr. 2026 Did you know? A good paragraph about engender will engender understanding in the reader. Like its synonym generate, engender comes from the Latin verb generare, meaning “to generate” or “to beget,” and when the word was first used in the 14th century, engender meant “propagate” or “procreate.” That literal meaning having to do with creating offspring (which generate shared when it was adopted in the early 16th century) was soon joined by the “to cause to exist or develop, to produce” meaning most familiar to us today. Generare didn't just engender generate and engender; regenerate, degenerate, and generation have the same Latin root. As you might suspect, the list of engender relatives does not end there. Generare comes from the Latin noun genus, meaning “origin” or “kind.” From this source we took our own word genus, plus gender, general, and generic, among other words.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 3, 2026 is: engender • in-JEN-der • verb Engender is a formal word that means “to be the source or cause of something.” // Our monthly book club meetings started as a way to connect and ended up being a great place to engender unity and build life-long friendships. See the entry > Examples: “... ‘During a moment defined by anti-intellectualism, escapism, and AI tools that let you skip cognitive work entirely ... intellectual creators are doing something kinda countercultural,' says Death To Stock's culture researcher Agus Panzoni. These influencers, who have already built established communities around intellectual pursuits, hold greater meaning and engender more trust ...” — Markiel Magsalin, Vogue, 15 April 2026 Did you know? A good paragraph about engender will engender understanding in the reader. Like its synonym generate, engender comes from the Latin verb generare, meaning “to generate” or “to beget,” and when the word was first used in the 14th century, engender meant “propagate” or “procreate.” That literal meaning having to do with creating offspring (which generate shared when it was adopted in the early 16th century) was soon joined by the “to cause to exist or develop, to produce” meaning most familiar to us today. Generare didn't just engender generate and engender; regenerate, degenerate, and generation have the same Latin root. As you might suspect, the list of engender relatives does not end there. Generare comes from the Latin noun genus, meaning “origin” or “kind.” From this source we took our own word genus, plus gender, general, and generic, among other words.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 2, 2026 is: crux • KRUKS • noun Crux refers to the most important part of something (such as a problem, issue, or puzzle). It is often used in the phrase "the crux of." // The crux of the problem is that the project's budget is totally inadequate. See the entry > Examples: "The new trees number in the thousands. ... What will become of this nursery in the wild in the next hundred years, or thousand, is the crux of a scientific and policy dispute. Starkly different visions of how the grove will recover in the long run have implications on how forest managers should act today." — Doug Smith, The Los Angeles Times, 15 Mar. 2026 Did you know? Latin speakers used crux to refer literally to an instrument of torture, often a cross or stake, and figuratively to the torture and misery inflicted by means of such an instrument. When English speakers adopted crux in the early 18th century, they used it to mean "a puzzling or difficult problem." In the late 19th century, crux developed a more specific use referring to an essential point of a legal case that required resolution before the case as a whole could be resolved. Today, the verdict on crux is that it can be used to refer to any important part of a problem or argument, inside or outside of the courtroom.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 1, 2026 is: palatable • PAL-uh-tuh-bul • adjective Palatable describes something that has a pleasant or agreeable taste, or that is pleasant or acceptable to someone. // Our group was pleasantly surprised that the food options at the local fair were actually palatable this year. // Given the traffic downtown, traveling by train is a palatable alternative to driving. See the entry > Examples: “[Toni] Morrison's work was not meant to be a palatable salve. Instead, surprise and provocation are the ingredients of her fiction.” — Edna Bonhomme, The New Republic, 6 Mar. 2026 Did you know? It may be a coincidence that you can't spell the word palatable without all of the letters in plate (the two words are etymologically unrelated), but this fact may help you remember that palatable is synonymous with a host of words that can describe an enjoyable meal, from tasty to toothsome. Alternatively, you could just stick your finger in your mouth and touch the roof of your mouth, aka your palate. As the palate was once considered the seat of one's sense of taste, so the word palate eventually came to refer to both a literal and figurative sense of taste (as in “architecture too ornate for my palate”). The adjective palatable arose from palate (via the now-rare verb palate defined in our Unabridged dictionary as “to taste or relish”) in the 17th century, and functions similarly. Seasonings from adobo to za'atar make food more palatable, certainly, but ideas and advice can be made more palatable, too. As a wise woman once sang, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

In this episode, hosts Annika Brockschmidt and Roland Meyer sit down with media scholar Roland Meyer to dissect the unsettling intersection of generative AI, right-wing extremism, and the emerging aesthetics of digital fascism. Meyer, a professor at the University of Zurich, breaks down why AI-generated visual culture is uniquely suited for far-right propaganda. Rather than acting as a neutral mirror of reality, these algorithms are structurally nostalgic—relying on past training data to build idealized, hyper-masculine mythologies, clean ethnic landscapes, and weaponized "slopaganda." From American frontier myths to European Islamophobic imagery, Meyer explains how mass-produced, engagement-optimized AI content is being actively weaponized to construct collective, racist fantasy worlds at an unprecedented scale. The conversation pushes past simple deepfakes to examine the darker political economy and Silicon Valley ideologies underlying the modern tech ecosystem. Meyer and the hosts unpack the rise of "slop"—voted Merriam-Webster's word of the year—and how algorithmic distribution networks reward dehumanizing depictions of marginalized groups while turning tech leaders into gladiatorial icons. By exploring how figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel's Alex Karp, and Charlie Kirk use these tools, the episode exposes a shared tech-authoritarian vision. This ideology frames AI not as a tool for public good, but as an unregulated, masculine force engineered for white, Western dominance, proving that the struggle over generative AI is fundamentally a battle over who controls the future of reality. Subscribe for $3.65: ⁠https://axismundi.supercast.com/⁠ Subscribe to our free newsletter: ⁠https://swaj.substack.com/⁠ Order American Caesar by Brad Onishi: ⁠https://static.macmillan.com/static/essentials/american-caesar-9781250427922/⁠ Donate to SWAJ: https://axismundi.supercast.com/donations/new Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 31, 2026 is: permutation • per-myoo-TAY-shun • noun Permutation is a formal word for any one of the many different ways or forms in which something exists or can be arranged. It can also refer to a major or fundamental change in something based primarily on rearrangement of its existing elements. Permutation is usually used in its plural form. // Early permutations of the design look nothing like the final result. // The system has gone through several permutations. See the entry > Examples: “Megadeth have weathered nearly all of metal's generational permutations, only once deviating from their ... formula with 1999's infamously confused country'n'industrial mish-mash, Risk.” — Eli Enis, Pitchfork, 26 Jan. 2026 Did you know? “Ch-ch-changes!” David Bowie sang memorably in his classic (and appropriately titled) hit “Changes,” which concerns the phenomenon of artistic reinvention—something Bowie knew a lot about. In fact, he could have titled the song “Permutations,” though we admit that the word would have been a bit clunkier to sing. Permutation is, after all, all about change—specifically change (as in character or condition) of something based primarily on rearrangement of its existing elements. For example, Bowie's artistic persona went through many permutations over the course of his career, from the alien rock star Ziggy Stardust to the aristocratic Thin White Duke, with the common denominator—the existing elements—being Bowie himself. (Permutation can also be used for a form or variety resulting from such changes, and can thus refer to Bowie's individual personae as well.) Permutation, perhaps ironically, has not changed all that much since it was borrowed into Middle English from Anglo-French as permutacioun.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 30, 2026 is: unctuous • UNK-chuh-wus • adjective Unctuous is a word that's undergone change in recent years. It now often describes food that is fatty and oily, especially in a pleasing way. Formerly it was more typically applied as a formal adjective describing someone who is figuratively oily—that is, overly or insincerely flattering. Both uses can be found today. // Braising chicken thighs with their skins on creates a rich, unctuous sauce that can be spooned back over the finished dish. // The mayor's unctuous assistant was making the rounds at the fundraiser, chatting up those known to have the biggest bank accounts. See the entry > Examples: “The thinly sliced pork belly is shaved into curlicues and cooks up super quickly and crisply, so it's great for an impatient group or as a first round. Thick slices are more akin to what you'd find at Korean BBQ restaurants nowadays; they'll cook and sizzle in their own fat … resulting in juicy, unctuous bites.” — Irene Yoo, Soju Party: How to Drink (and Eat!) Like a Korean, 2025 Did you know? Unctuous is a slippery word in multiple ways. Its ultimate source is a Latin word meaning “to anoint; to smear or rub with oil or an oily substance,” and this oily character was key to the word's meaning when it first appeared in the 14th century, as when John Trevisa wrote “Þe fruit of olyue is ful of liȝt, likynge, and vnctuous” (in modern English: “the olive fruit is bright, delicious, and unctuous”). Unctuous here means “fatty” or “oily,” as did its immediate Medieval Latin predecessor unctuosus. This same use of unctuous is quite prominent today, as the word often describes deliciously fatty foods and the sensation of such foods on the palate (as in “an unctuous mouthfeel”). But come across unctuous in literature of the 19th or 20th century and you're more likely to see a less pleasant application, with the word describing a person or behavior that is figuratively oily—that is, overly or insincerely flattering.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 29, 2026 is: cohort • KOH-hort • noun Cohort refers to a group or band of individuals, as in “a cohort of supporters.” It can also be used for a group of individuals who have a statistical factor (such as age) in common in a demographic study, as in “a cohort of people born in the 1980s.” Cohort can be used for individuals too, as for a friend, companion, or colleague, but it is almost always used in its plural form. // I wouldn't have made it through graduate school without the help of my supportive cohort. See the entry > Examples: “By the time Rosie emerged ... for her afternoon meet-and-greet, the line of guests eager to hold the famed tarantula had already wrapped around the room and into the hallway. ... Tarantulas need to be at least 10 years old to be handled, so rearing a new cohort of Rosies could take up to a decade.” — Laura Penington, The Denver Post, 18 Aug. 2025 Did you know? In ancient times, a cohort was a military unit, one of ten divisions in a Roman legion. The term passed into English in the 15th century, when it was used in translations and writings about Roman history. Once cohort became established in our language, its meaning was extended, first to refer to any body of troops, then to any group of individuals with something in common (as in “a cohort of law students” or “a cohort of people who were born in the same year”), and later to a single companion. Some writers on usage have objected to this last sense because it can be hard to tell whether the plural refers to different individuals or different groups. The “companion” sense is well established in standard use, however, and its meaning is clear enough in such sentences as “her cohorts came along with her to the game.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 28, 2026 is: ingratiate • in-GRAY-shee-ayt • verb To ingratiate yourself with others is to gain their favor or approval by deliberately doing or saying things they will like. Ingratiate is usually used with with, and is often (though not always) used disapprovingly. // Scam artists often have an uncanny ability to ingratiate themselves with their victims using subtle flattery that only seems obvious in retrospect. // Although she was nervous to be the new girl in school, Emma quickly ingratiated herself with her classmates through her effortless charm and kind demeanor. See the entry > Examples: “In ever greater numbers, Elizabeth's subjects flocked north to ingratiate themselves with the Queen's likely successor.” — Tracy Borman, The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit, and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty, 2025 Did you know? When you ingratiate yourself, you put yourself in someone's good graces in order to gain their approval or favor. While the word ingratiate does not necessarily imply that your behavior is obsequious or otherwise improper, the word may be used disapprovingly by those who distrust your motives. The word entered English in the early 1600s from the combining of the Latin noun gratia, meaning “grace” or “favor,” with the English prefix in-. Gratia comes from the adjective gratus, meaning “pleasing, grateful.” Gratus has, over the centuries, ingratiated itself well with the English language as the ancestor of a whole host of words including gratuitous, congratulate, and grace.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 27, 2026 is: benevolent • buh-NEV-uh-lunt • adjective Benevolent can describe someone or something that is kind and generous or something that is organized for the purpose of doing good. // The event's reception was courtesy of a benevolent donor who's chosen to remain anonymous. // They belong to several benevolent societies and charitable organizations. See the entry > Examples: "The Community Service Award is presented at the local, state and national levels to individuals and groups who have made outstanding voluntary, civil, heroic or benevolent contributions to their communities." — Devin Weeks, The Coeur d'Alene (Idaho) Press, 24 Dec. 2025 Did you know? One who is benevolent genuinely wishes other people well, a meaning reflected clearly in the word's Latin roots: benevolent comes from bene, meaning "good," and velle, meaning "to wish." Other descendants of velle in English include volition, which refers to the power to make one's own choices or decisions, and voluntary, as well as the rare velleity, meaning either "the lowest degree of volition" or "a slight wish or tendency." A more familiar velle descendant stands directly opposed to benevolent: malevolent describes someone or something having or showing a desire to cause harm to another person.

The FINAL definition of vamp on the Merriam-Webster site says "Improvise, extemporize." That's the one we're using here. Not "a woman who uses her charm or wiles to seduce and exploit men," which is the FIRST definition. What the actual hell? On this Dorks Just Chatting, Chewie talks all about his newly-purple beard and his mom's stay in the hospital. Dirk has no idea when things happened and tells us all about a massive school program that eventually just...stopped. We discuss extracurricular activities in school (or our lack thereof). We reminisce about weird problems we had with old guests (or people who didn't become guests) in our ridiculously long history. We wonder at the UK officially preserving Badger Badger Badger, which leads naturally into...Nintendo Power and its comics. Naturally. Eventually this gets us to new editions of books that change words and titles, and that's where Chewie learned about the original title of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. That's not even the end, I just got sick of typing! Badgers - https://www.fark.com/goto/14073900/boingboing.net/2026/05/19/the-uk-has-formally-declared-badger-badger-badger-worthy-of-preservation.html Nintendo Power comics - https://comicsalliance.com/nintendo-power-comics-retrospective/ Come join us in the future! The show is live on Thursdays around 8pm(ish) Eastern time on Twitch. Become a Lifeguard on Patreon! – patreon.com/themanapool Podcast RSS Feed: themanapool.libsyn.com/rss YouTube: youtube.com/TheManaPool The Deep End: youtube.com/@TheDeepEndTMP TMP Streams Archive: youtube.com/@TMPStreams Twitch: twitch.tv/themanapool Discord: discord.gg/7da7T6s BlueSky: themanapool.bsky.social Instagram: TheManaPool Threads: @TheManaPool Email: dorks@themanapool.com

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 26, 2026 is: Gordian knot • GOR-dee-un-NAHT • noun Gordian knot refers to a complicated and difficult problem. It is often used in the phrase cut the Gordian knot, which means “to solve a difficult problem in a very direct way by doing something forceful or extreme.” // The organization's change in leadership is being widely applauded as a step toward stability, but many are less than optimistic about the new director's ability to cut the Gordian knot at the center of its troubles. See the entry > Examples: “Meanwhile, officials are having high-level conversations about the long-term effectiveness of Michigan's aging dam infrastructure and the growing need for effective flood mitigation measures. Whitmer noted a Gordian knot of complexity around the state's dams, many of which are operated through murky public-private arrangements.” — Byron McCauley, The Holland (Michigan) Sentinel, 23 Apr. 2026 Did you know? According to legend, when the peasant Gordius became king of Gordium, capital of the ancient district of Phrygia (in what is now modern Türkiye), he fastened the yoke of his wagon to a beam with a very complex knot. Centuries later, when Alexander the Great arrived on the scene, he was told that he couldn't conquer and rule Asia unless he proved himself worthy by untying the knot. Alexander quickly solved his problem—and gained a new kingdom—by slicing the knot in half with his sword. Since then, Gordian knot has been a term for a difficult problem, and the phrase “cut the Gordian knot” has been a way to describe a direct and forceful solution to an apparently insurmountable difficulty.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 25, 2026 is: sacrosanct • SAK-roh-sankt • adjective Sacrosanct is a formal word that describes something too important and respected to be changed or criticized. It can also mean "most sacred or holy." // While the family's new matriarch aimed to maintain the familiar traditions of the holidays, she did not consider the details of their celebration to be sacrosanct. See the entry > Examples: "Sen. Paul Strommen of Sidney ... said there's no appetite among senators to empty the Veterans Aid Fund. 'There's certain things that are kind of sacrosanct, and veterans' aid is one of those things.'" — Todd von Kampen, The North Platte (Nebraska) Telegraph, 7 Mar. 2026 Did you know? Contrary to the beliefs of some, language is not sacrosanct; rather, it is subject to constant modification based on the needs, experiences, and even whims of those who use it. Take the word sacrosanct itself, which likely comes from the Latin phrase sacro sanctus meaning "made holy by a sacred rite." There's a definite semantic softening from that to the "too important and respected to be changed or criticized" meaning of sacrosanct. But holy moly, has sanctus led to a whole bunch of other English words with a truly pious flavor, from saint and sanctimony to sanctify and sanctuary. Sacrum ("a sacred rite"), source of the sacro in sacro sanctus, is no slouch either, living on in English anatomy as the name for our pelvic vertebrae—a shortening of os sacrum, which translates literally as "holy bone."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 24, 2026 is: onus • OH-nuss • noun Onus is a formal word typically used to refer to a responsibility, obligation, or burden. It is usually preceded by the word the. // Management has made it clear that the onus is on employees to ask for further training if they don't understand the new procedures. See the entry > Examples: “The [London Book Fair] comes the week before the government is due to deliver its progress report on AI and copyright, after proposals for a relaxation of existing laws caused outrage last year. Philippa Gregory, the novelist, described the plans for an ‘opt-out' policy, which puts the onus on writers to refuse permission for their work to be trawled, as akin to putting a sign on your front door asking burglars to pass by.” — The Guardian (London), 13 Mar. 2026 Did you know? Understanding the etymology of onus shouldn't be a burden; it's as simple as knowing that English borrowed the word—spelling, meaning, and all—from Latin in the 17th century. Onus is also a distant relative of the Sanskrit word anas, meaning cart (as in, a wheeled wagon or vehicle that carries a burden). English isn't exactly loaded with words that come from Latin onus, but onerous (“difficult and unpleasant to do or deal with”) is one, which is fitting since in addition to being synonymous with “burden,” onus has also long been used to refer to obligations and responsibilities that one may find annoying, taxing, disagreeable, or distasteful.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 23, 2026 is: expedite • EK-spuh-dyte • verb To expedite something is to cause it to happen faster. // We'll do what we can to expedite the processing of your application. See the entry > Examples: “The new task force ... is required to submit an initial report in 60 days and final report in 90 days with recommendations to simplify, improve and expedite hiring.” — Blake Paterson, NOLA.com (New Orleans, Louisiana), 7 Apr. 2026 Did you know? Need someone to do something in a hurry? You can tell that person to step on it, or you can tell them to expedite it. Figurative feet are involved in both cases, though less obviously in the second choice. Expedite comes from the Latin verb expedire, meaning “to free from entanglement or difficulty.” The feet come in at that word's root: it traces back to Latin ped- or pes, meaning “foot.” Expedient and expedition also stepped into English by way of expedire.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 22, 2026 is: fraught • FRAWT • adjective Fraught describes something that causes or involves a lot of emotional stress or worry. When fraught is used in the phrase “fraught with,” it means “full of something bad or unwanted.” // The siblings had a fraught relationship. // The paper was poorly researched and fraught with errors. See the entry > Examples: "We might think replicating one of these ideas will deliver that perfectly walkable, equitable, sustainable and prosperous city of our hopeful imagination. Not likely. Many of these were hard wins, often fraught and contested in their local context." — Gia Biagi, The Chicago Tribune, 5 Apr. 2026 Did you know? An early instance of the word fraught occurs in the 14th century poem Richard Coer de Lyon, about England's King Richard I, aka Richard the Lionheart. The line "The drowmound was so hevy fraught / That unethe myght it saylen aught" describes a large fast-sailing ship so heavily fraught—that is, loaded—that it can barely sail. The poet's use of fraught is typical for the time; originally, something that was fraught was laden with freight. For centuries, fraught continued to be used in relation to loaded ships, but that use is now considered archaic. These days, fraught is used in reference to situations that are heavy with tension, emotion, or some other weighty characteristic.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 21, 2026 is: lacuna • luh-KOO-nuh • noun Lacuna is a formal word that refers to a gap or blank space in something—in other words, a missing part. When used with respect to biology, lacuna also refers to a small cavity, pit, or discontinuity in an anatomical structure. // The absence of hemlock pollen from one stretch of the fossil record is a notable lacuna that suggests the tree may have once suffered from some type of blight that nearly wiped out the species. // An osteocyte is a cell that is isolated in a lacuna of bone. See the entry > Examples: “At the heart of every biography ... lies a lacuna—something unknowable, no matter how candid or heavily documented the subject, no matter how familiar or diligent the biographer.” — Casey Cep, The New Yorker, 14 Apr. 2025 Did you know? If you find yourself drawing a blank when it comes to the definition of lacuna, it might help to imagine drawing water instead, ideally from a lake or lagoon. Lacuna, lake, and lagoon all come ultimately from lacus, the Latin word for “lake.” Latin speakers modified lacus into lacuna to form a word meaning “pit,” “gap,” or “pool.” When English speakers borrowed the term in the 17th century, they used it to refer to a figurative gap in or missing portion of something, such as information or text. (Note that lacuna comes with two plural options: the Latin lacunae luh-KYOO-nee or luh-KOO-nye, or the anglicized lacunas luh-KOO-nuz.) Lagoon, meanwhile, hewed closer to the Latin lacuna, referring first to a shallow sound, channel, or pond near or connected to a larger body of water, and later to a shallow artificial pool or pond.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 20, 2026 is: cordial • KOR-jul • adjective Cordial describes someone or something that is politely pleasant and friendly. // All the guests were assembled and given a cordial greeting by the host. See the entry > Examples: “The Burnside post office is a small one-­room wooden building profusely planted with flowers all around it. ... One enters a tiny vestibule and pushes a buzzer, which brings Christine out of the house, brushing by you into the ‘office' proper, where she opens the counter window and, with a smile and a toss of her hair, says, in a cordial tone, ‘Now, my dear, what can I do for you?'” — Robert Finch, Summers in Squid Tickle: A Newfoundland Odyssey, 2025 Did you know? The Latin root cord- (or cor) is at the heart of the connection between cordial, concord (meaning “harmony”), and discord (meaning “conflict”). Cord- means “heart,” and each of these cord- descendants has something to do with the heart, at least figuratively. Concord, which comes from com- (meaning “together” or “with”) plus -cord, suggests that one heart is with another. Discord combines the prefix dis- (meaning “apart”) with -cord to imply that hearts are apart. Hundreds of years ago, cordial could mean simply “of or relating to the (literal) heart” (the -ial is simply an adjective suffix) but today anything described as cordial—be it a friendly welcome, a compliment, or an agreement—comes from the heart in a figurative sense. Cordial is also used as a noun to refer to a usually sweet liqueur, the name being inspired by the idea that a cordial invigorates the heart.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 19, 2026 is: demeanor • dih-MEE-ner • noun Demeanor refers to someone's outward manner and behavior toward others. // The teacher's calm demeanor put the classroom at ease. See the entry > Examples: “At home, your demeanor impacts your family more than you realize. Your kids feed off your energy. If you're engaged, positive, and present, they feel it.” — Brandon Brigman, The Rockdale Citizen (Conyers, Georgia), 30 Mar. 2026 Did you know? The history of demeanor begins with a threat: the word has its roots in Latin minārī, meaning “to threaten.” A form of that word was used in contexts having to do with driving animals—that is, impelling them to move—and from this word came more recent French ancestors having to do with leading, guiding, and behaving. By the 14th century, English had adopted a word out of this lineage: the verb demean meaning “to conduct or behave (oneself) usually in a proper manner.” (Another demean, defined as “to lower in character, status, or reputation,” entered the language later by way of the mean that has to do with being cruel.) The noun demeanor was formed in the following century through the addition of the suffix -or.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 18, 2026 is: vindicate • VIN-duh-kayt • verb To vindicate someone is to show that they are not guilty. Vindicate can also mean “to show that someone or something that has been criticized or doubted is correct, true, or reasonable.” // A series of testimonies helped vindicate the defendant. // Their much-maligned approach to the problem has now been vindicated by these positive results. See the entry > Examples: “He [Bob Dylan] never expressed embarrassment over the dismal commercial failure of his would-be cinematic masterpiece, Renaldo and Clara, even after the film's financers, Warner Bros., warned Dylan that the film's nearly five hour running time would ensure its failure (which would prove true). Dylan insisted that the film needed every frame. And who knows, art history may vindicate him.” — Ron Rosenbaum, Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed, 2025 Did you know? It's hard not to marvel at the rich history of vindicate. Vindicate, which has been used in English since at least the mid-16th century, comes from a form of the Latin verb vindicare, meaning “to set free, avenge, or lay claim to.” Vindicare, in turn, comes from vindex, a noun meaning “claimant” or “avenger.” Truly, vindex has proven to be an incredible hulk of a word progenitor over the centuries. Other descendants of this “avenger” assembled in English include avenge itself, revenge, vengeance, vendetta, and vindictive.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 17, 2026 is: affable • AF-uh-bul • adjective Affable describes someone who is friendly and easy to talk to. It can also describe something, such as someone's personality, that is characterized by ease and friendliness. // The restaurant's affable owner can be seen most nights welcoming his guests and making light conversation. // In the hallways, the principal has an affable demeanor; however, when called to her office, students know she is all about business. See the entry > Examples: “Ray Naranjo is a Native American chef from Santa Clara Pueblo in northern New Mexico. He's a big, affable man with a wide, warm smile, built more for a football field than his food truck, Manko.” — Michael Shaikh, The Last Sweet Bite: Stories and Recipes of Culinary Heritage Lost and Found, 2025 Did you know? There is nothing in the meaning of affable (“friendly and easy to talk to”), nor in its etymology (the word traces back to the Latin verb affārī, meaning “to speak to, address”), to suggest it is more properly applied to men than to women, but English-speaking people behave as though it is. This was not always true; in the 16th through the 19th centuries, it was not uncommon to see the word describing women, but no more. We once surveyed all the cases in which a single newspaper used affable over a 12-month period. The word occurred in 102 articles, and in 4 occurrences it described women, while in 85 occurrences it described men (in the other cases affable was used to describe a conga line, email, musical compositions by Robert Ward, cats in general, and one male dog). None of this need affect your use of the term. You should feel free to apply it in whatever way seems suitable. Think of this more as a reminder that the currents of our language are deep and occasionally mysterious, gently nudging us along paths we don't even see.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 16, 2026 is: kiki • KEE-kee • noun Kiki is a slang term used for an informal gathering among close friends, especially to share lively gossip or frank conversation. It can also refer more broadly to gossipy conversation. Kiki is especially used in and associated with LGBTQ+ and Black communities. // The performers had a kiki backstage before the show. See the entry > Examples: “The year 2024 will long be remembered in pop culture as the year of #bratsummer, christened, of course, by the early-June release of an instantly-iconic pop album, Charli XCX's Brat. It was the cultural equivalent of the hippies' summer of love in 1967, but for the girls and gays a singular moment in time when every day offered the chance of a kiki and every night flirted with throwing a rave.” — Vanessa Quilantan, The Dallas Observer, 26 Aug. 2025 Did you know? Let's chitchat about the word kiki, a fun word for a fun, gossipy gathering. While its exact origins are unclear, we know that kiki has roots in the ballroom community, a primarily Black and Latino drag subculture that spread in US cities especially in the 1980s–90s. In the early 2000s, a movement emerged within ball culture that was often referred to as the kiki scene. This involved support groups and social services for LGBTQ+ youth, and provided opportunities to socialize, including in the form of so-called kiki balls, or festive, party-like drag performances. This scene was notably captured in the 2016 documentary Kiki, popularly considered a sequel to 1990's Paris is Burning. Kiki is also used as a verb meaning “to share lively gossip or frank conversation”—in other words, “to have a kiki.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 15, 2026 is: tortuous • TOR-chuh-wus • adjective Tortuous describes something that has many literal or figurative twists and turns. // The tortuous mountain path rewards climbers with a stunning view of the town below. // Getting approval for a project of this magnitude is a tortuous process. See the entry > Examples: “Christopher Nolan's latest epic is an adaptation of the ancient Greek epic poem, The Odyssey. ... Homer's poem is centered on Greek hero King Odysseus ... and his tortuous, 10-year journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.” — Lexy Perez, The Hollywood Reporter, 4 Jan. 2026 Did you know? Be careful not to confuse tortuous with torturous. These two words are relatives—both ultimately come from the Latin verb torquēre, which means “to twist,” “to wind,” or “to wrench”—but tortuous means “winding” or “crooked,” whereas torturous means “painfully unpleasant.” (Its oldest meaning is “causing torture.”) Something tortuous, such as a twisting mountain road, might also be torturous (if, for example, you have to ride up that road on a bicycle), but that doesn't make these words synonyms. The twists and turns that mark a tortuous thing can be literal (“a tortuous path” or “a tortuous river”) or figurative (“a tortuous argument” or “a tortuous explanation”), but you should veer away from using the term if no implication of winding or crookedness is present.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 14, 2026 is: imbroglio • im-BROHL-yoh • noun Imbroglio is a formal word that refers to a complex dispute or argument. // Much of the sisters' text thread involves the latest imbroglios on their favorite reality show—who's mad at who for what, and why. See the entry > Examples: “A tangled web of interpersonal feuds, played out in letters to the local newspaper, in social media posts and via legal filings in county court, has left the town with no clear path out of a situation that's not covered by state law. The imbroglio has even reached the state Capitol ...” — Seth Klamann and Sam Tabachnik, The Denver Post, 8 Mar. 2026 Did you know? Ever noticed how an imbroglio embroils people in controversy? There's a reason for that—an etymological one, anyway. Both the noun imbroglio (referring to, among other things, a scandal or bitter argument) and verb embroil (“to involve in conflicts or difficulties”) come from the Middle French word embrouiller, a combination of the prefix en- and brouiller, meaning “to jumble,” though they took slightly different paths. Embroil's was direct, passing from Middle French through French and into English around the turn of the 16th century. Italians altered embrouiller to form imbrogliare, meaning “to entangle,” which spawned the noun imbroglio that English speakers embraced in the mid-18th century. English imbroglio first referred to a confused mass, and later expanded to cover confusing social situations such as complicated disputes, misunderstandings, and scandals.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 14, 2026 is: imbroglio • im-BROHL-yoh • noun Imbroglio is a formal word that refers to a complex dispute or argument. // Much of the sisters' text thread involves the the latest imbroglios on their favorite reality show—who's mad at who for what, and why. See the entry > Examples: “A tangled web of interpersonal feuds, played out in letters to the local newspaper, in social media posts and via legal filings in county court, has left the town with no clear path out of a situation that's not covered by state law. The imbroglio has even reached the state Capitol ...” — Seth Klamann and Sam Tabachnik, The Denver Post, 8 Mar. 2026 Did you know? Ever noticed how an imbroglio embroils people in controversy? There's a reason for that—an etymological one, anyway. Both the noun imbroglio (referring to, among other things, a scandal or bitter argument) and verb embroil (“to involve in conflicts or difficulties”) come from the Middle French word embrouiller, a combination of the prefix en- and brouiller, meaning “to jumble,” though they took slightly different paths. Embroil's was direct, passing from Middle French through French and into English around the turn of the 16th century. Italians altered embrouiller to form imbrogliare, meaning “to entangle,” which spawned the noun imbroglio that English speakers embraced in the mid-18th century. English imbroglio first referred to a confused mass, and later expanded to cover confusing social situations such as complicated disputes, misunderstandings, and scandals.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 13, 2026 is: rectify • REK-tuh-fye • verb Rectify is a formal word meaning “to correct (something that is wrong).” // We were given the wrong room key, but the hotel management quickly rectified the situation. See the entry > Examples: “NYC contributes roughly 54.5% of state revenue but receives only 40.5% back. Our budget proposals work to rectify this unsustainable imbalance and restore the funding our city deserves.” — Cordell Cleare, The New York Daily News, 18 Mar. 2026 Did you know? When you rectify something, you correct an error or make things right, which is fitting because rectify and correct both ultimately trace back to the Latin word regere, meaning “to lead straight,” “to direct,” or “to rule.” Rectify has had its “to set right” meaning since the early 16th century, but the word has over the years accrued various other meanings as well, including the specialized uses “to purify especially by repeated or fractional distillation” (as in “rectified alcohol”), “to make (an alternating current) unidirectional,” and several medical applications having to do with healing of one kind or another. Regere plays a part in the histories of several familiar English words, in addition to those mentioned above; the many relatives of rectify include direct, resurrection, and regimen.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 12, 2026 is: catercorner • KAT-ee-kor-ner • adverb or adjective Catercorner is used to describe two things that are located across from each other on opposite corners. It is a less common variant of kitty-corner. // The store is catercorner from the park, making it the perfect location to grab snacks for our picnic. See the entry > Examples: “Positioned on balconies catercorner from each other, Tom Brady completed a pass across Bourbon Street to Rob Gronkowski, proving they've still got it. Gronk promptly spiked the football on the fan-filled street below.” — Rebecca Cohen and Greg Rosenstein, NBC News, 9 Feb. 2025 Did you know? Catercorner gets its first element from the Middle French noun quatre, meaning “four,” which English speakers modified to cater and applied to the four-dotted side of a die—a side important in several winning combinations in dice games. Perhaps because the four spots on a die can suggest an X, cater eventually came to be used dialectically as a verb meaning “to place, move, or cut across diagonally”; cater was later combined with corner to form catercorner to describe things positioned diagonally from each other. (In one early usage from an 1825 magazine article, the author marvels at an “ancient Roman fresco painting, in which a luxurious table is represented as groaning under (among other choice dishes …) four peacocks, with their tails set, cater-corner!”) Eventually the variants kitty-corner and catty-corner, which are now the more common forms, developed. Despite all appearances, these terms bear no etymological relation to our feline friends.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 11, 2026 is: paragon • PAIR-uh-gahn • noun Paragon is a formal word that refers to a person or thing that is perfect or excellent in some way and should be considered a model or example to be copied. // In Arthurian legend, Sir Galahad is depicted as a paragon of virtue. See the entry > Examples: "With a bar staff locally renowned for its cocktails, curated French cuisine, an extensive champagne menu and immaculately stylish atmosphere ... Claude is the local paragon of elegance." — Elijah Decious, The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), 18 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Paragon comes from the Old Italian word paragone, which literally means "touchstone." A touchstone is a black stone that was formerly used to judge the purity of gold or silver. The metal was rubbed on the stone and the color of the streak it left indicated its quality. In modern English, both touchstone and paragon have come to signify a standard against which something should be judged. Ultimately, paragon comes from the Greek verb parakonan, meaning "to sharpen," from the prefix para- ("alongside of") and akonē, meaning "whetstone."

How can upgrading your verbs transform flat writing into vivid, page-turning prose? Why do so many writing problems turn out to be verb problems — and how can you fix yours? Sarah Kaufman explores the art of the verb and shares practical tips for making your writing stronger, clearer, and more alive. In the intro, writing as a caregiver and grief [Stark Reflections; The Creative Penn episode]; Beyond Bookshops — Bulk Sales, Gifting and Alternative Distribution [Self-Publishing Advice]; list of money books; London walk along SouthBank; Bones of the Deep: AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Sarah Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize–winning critic, an award-winning author, and a writing teacher. Her latest book is Verb Your Enthusiasm: How to Master the Art of the Verb and Transform Your Writing. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why verbs are the most versatile and underrated tool in a writer's toolkit How to replace flat, explanatory sentences with vivid, action-driven prose The power of physical and metaphorical verbs to show emotion instead of telling it When passive voice works, and when it's hiding something Balancing beautiful language with the demands of storytelling and deadlines How to broaden your writing expertise into a sustainable portfolio career You can find Sarah at SarahLKaufman.com. Transcript of the interview with Sarah Kaufman Jo: Sarah Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize–winning critic, an award-winning author, and a writing teacher. Her latest book is Verb Your Enthusiasm: How to Master the Art of the Verb and Transform Your Writing. Welcome to the show, Sarah. Sarah: Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be with you. Jo: This is such a great topic, but first up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Sarah: I got into writing in a backwards way, I guess. The romantic, wonderful thing about writing is the freedom that it gives you, right? That's what we all think about—this freedom to address the world. Then the practical, wonderful thing about writing is developing a focal point, which I had to do in order to write in the first place. I'll explain a little bit about that. I became a dance critic, which is what I did at the Washington Post for 27 years, to have something to write about. That was necessary because, though I've always known that I wanted to be a writer ever since earliest childhood, I just didn't really find things to write about when it came time to actually try to make a living at it. As I was approaching leaving college as an English major, I was getting very anxious about what I was actually going to do, and I didn't have this burning desire to write about any certain thing. I happened to be working as a full-time secretary at a ballet school because I had been a ballet nerd all through my youth. I knew quite a bit about doing ballet, about the steps and about the lingo, so I was a suitable candidate to work at a ballet school. I was learning so much from the teachers there—who had all been professional dancers—about the aesthetics of ballet and how you shape the steps into art and into a performance. I was getting more and more interested in dance. One day the director took me out to lunch and she said, “You should write about dance.” I had seriously never considered that before, but she knew that I was an English major, that I wanted to write. She said, “Look, you know so much,” and she really encouraged me. So I said, “Well, okay, I'll give it a go,” because I had been reading dance criticism. I just started picking it apart and seeing how critics put their reviews together, called up a local paper, took on some freelance assignments, and did a lot of freelancing for years and eventually landed at the Washington Post. So the point I want to make is that I had that thing to write about. Now I had a focal point, and my books grew out of that. The first book I wrote is The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life. That was an exploration of aspects of grace stemming from physical grace, which I knew about from dancers, and looking at connections there with social grace and spiritual grace. Then this verbs book likewise grew out of my work as a dance writer because my goal in writing about dance was to capture the experience of it. I didn't want to be a scholarly type of critic, though I do love that kind of criticism and I read it and learn so much from it, but I knew that was not going to be my style. I wanted more to primarily recreate the experience for the reader, as well as then coming in with analysis of it. I was just so fascinated by the look and the feel of what I was seeing on the stage. I wanted to be able to share that with the reader. So I had to lean on verbs to capture the action, and people occasionally would say, “Oh, you're so good with verbs, Sarah,” which I thought was kind of interesting. It's like, oh, so this is a strength I had developed. I didn't really realise it. Then that, coupled with my teaching experience, is what led me to think I have some things to talk about regarding verbs. I'd like to share with the world because, as a teacher, I often see that writing issues my students have are actually verb issues. They get into a corner with a lot of explanation or clauses on top of clauses, and they get lost. Where is the point that you want to make here? What is the meaning? What is it you want me to take away from your work? Well, if we pare that back and look at the verbs and try to get some direction in the sentences, that often brings clarity. Suddenly the student will say, “I was thinking more about adjectives and nouns. I didn't realise that verbs were really something to focus on.” I thought that would be an interesting challenge to bring that out. Jo: It's so fascinating. I love how your career has emerged and that you've leaned into different things. It has a kind of dance to it itself. We're going to come back to your career, but let's start with that, because you mentioned that with many of your students you are reading their work and you think, “Oh, we can fix this with some verbs.” Let's get into that because you talk about weeding and this verb-first editing process. Most of the listeners will have some kind of writing already—either they've got a lot of books or they've got a draft in progress. This is the kind of thing we struggle with: how do we make our work stronger? Talk about why you are so obsessed with verbs some tips for making our work stronger. Sarah: Yes, I am obsessed with verbs. I will cop to that. They're so interesting and I felt like they were a little underrated as a writing tool. Verbs, as we learned in school, drive your sentence forward. They're the engine. Really, I feel like they are the secret soul of language, because they're so versatile, they're so essential. First of all, they hold it all together. They're the only part of speech that in itself is a full sentence. You can have a full sentence that's a verb. “Watch.” “Look.” “Continue.” You could go on and on. That is a full grammatical sentence. You can't do that with any other part of speech. They're so essential. The word “verb” itself comes from the Latin verbum, which means “a word.” So verbs became that name for all words. Our literary ancestors understood this—that they're really the beginning and the end as far as words go. They can add to your work when you start thinking about verbs in this way, and you start thinking about how can I elevate my writing—well, verbs are very efficient and very evocative. They can add not only clarity to your work, but a kind of elegance. They can say so much in such a little amount of space. For example, say you have something like this: “The cook was facing the dinner rush, and so she decided to put together something quick and easy so no one would know how nervous and unprepared she was.” In that sentence, I'm doing a lot of explaining and describing. I'm just explaining to you the situation, but I haven't really brought it to life much. A better way to do it might be something like this—and you can see it comes a little bit more active: “The dinner rush pressed upon her. To hide her nerves, she whisked eggs and milk into omelettes, shredded parsley with her bare hands and flung it all onto plates like Jackson Pollock splashing his canvas.” I show you what her nerves and the pressure resulted in. I show that manifesting. Or you could even shorten it and just say: “Dinner rush loomed. She whisked and whipped, chopped and dripped and masked her nerves with glistening omelettes.” There are stylistic differences there, but it's just to give an example of how you can take something that, on the face of it, sure, it makes sense—it's perfectly fine as a sentence—but it just lies there. It's flat. Maybe it's not very exciting. It doesn't really move the story forward. You can bring it to life by showing us. You show us with the action. Jo: You haven't really specifically said what a verb is in that sentence you just had around “whisked” and all of those things. Those sentences were actually quite different in a lot of the different words you used. You didn't just swap out for stronger verbs. Could you just point out what the verbs were, in case people are confused about which words are which? Sarah: Right. Great. In the first, inferior example I have: “The cook was facing the dinner rush.” So then I amended it to: “The dinner rush pressed upon her.” I'm giving the dinner rush itself a verb—”press.” It weighed on her, it pressed on her. Also, in the third example—”the dinner rush loomed”—so that's even shorter. “Loom” is a wonderful verb. I love it because it conveys a sense of threat. That's what I mean by verbs being so efficient and evocative in one word. “A storm loomed.” “The dinner rush loomed.” You convey the emotion around the whole event. “To hide her nerves, she whisked eggs and milk into omelettes, shredded parsley.” So “hide”—she's hiding her nerves rather than just saying she felt nervous. You give it a little bit more action, you give her a little bit more character by saying she's doing this to hide her nerves. Then whisking the eggs, shredding the parsley, flinging it onto plates—that shows how she's being creative and surmounting this problem, right? Instead of simply describing—”So she decided to use her expertise and create a nice dinner”—you show that in motion with things like whisking and shredding and flinging it onto plates. That's an example of how you can slide in upgraded verbs to lend a sense of energy and life. Jo: I think this idea of motion is so great, and you tie this in a lot to your work. You've written a lot about physical action, and in the book there is a chapter on physical action. I think this is so important because many authors will say, “Use the word ‘said'” without thinking about dialogue within a pattern of action. Your chef there could say something as she flung the parsley on the plate, rather than “the chef said this.” Get moving as she flung the stuff onto the plate. The action verbs are so important. Could you talk a bit more about [action verbs] and the physical action side of it? Sarah: Yes, and that's so right. When you have a scene really rolling, you don't need to do so much explaining about the way a person says something with those dialogue tags. It's very interesting. I feel like words are alive—they're living, breathing things—and the more that we let them come to life on the page, the more you can draw your reader into the story. The reader gets a sense of that life and wants to come into the story with you. You've really created a scene that your reader feels immersed in. And that's so exciting as a reader to discover. Writing about movement is part of that. Of course writing is very vast—it's hard to say, “Well, you should always write about movement.” That would be silly. If we think about movement and action and action verbs as being effective not only for the actions that we see around us, but for inner actions—the subtle feelings, thinking, non-action, but internally what's going on—that's also space for effective verbs. For churning emotions, for metaphors about fright and what that feels like in the body. Or despair. Or regret. I have a lot of examples of that in the book. It's another beautiful use of verbs where, instead of explaining what someone is feeling, you can show it through metaphorical verbs and actual physical changes—things roiling inside the body. Jo: For example, someone in their draft has “she was afraid”— How could they make that much stronger and use a lot of those things you were just talking about? Sarah: That's an excellent question. Instead of “she was afraid,” you might say something like: “She felt her chest fill with ice, freezing her lungs and choking her breath, and her heart bashed around as if to tear itself from her body.” We could get very dramatic about it, but you can play with that. What I like to encourage readers to do is open their minds and open their imaginations. When you have a pretty standard phrase like “she was afraid” or “she felt too frightened to move”—well, put yourself in that position. What does that feel like? What does that really feel like inside when you're too frightened to move? Is it an icy feeling or is it a burning? Is it a numbness? And what verbs might help with that? Is it thrashing? Is it raging? Is it paralysing? How can that type of expressiveness fill in the picture and make it palpable to the reader—what it's like to be in the room with this person? Jo: Do you recommend using a thesaurus? I try to do this myself, and I often use Power Thesaurus, which I just find so useful, because as writers, when we are writing novels or books in a similar genre, we often reach for the same words. Are you a big thesaurus user? Sarah: I am a huge thesaurus user. I have a stack of actual book-type thesauri, but I do like, as you mentioned, Power Thesaurus. I like OneLook, which is an interesting resource. I think it's OneLook.com and you can go in the other way—you can use it as a thesaurus, but you can also use it to find one verb that combines a couple of words. Like “walk clumsily,” for example. You could put that into OneLook and it would come up with lists and lists. And among them might be “hobble” and “limp” and other words to say what a weak verb plus an adverb can say. Online resources are wonderful. I like Merriam-Webster.com—that's what I rely on a lot. Cambridge too. A thesaurus is wonderful. Now, the caution with the thesaurus, however, is that I would like to urge people to be mindful about just swapping in one word for another, or one verb for another, because even though they may appear in the same groupings, there are going to be subtle differences among them. I find it fascinating to really investigate the subtle difference between, say, “limp” and “hobble” and “stumble.” Those all mean slightly different things. So the finishing tip is just to make sure the word you choose is going to be right for the context. Jo: And also perhaps the audience. I mean, you are a Pulitzer Prize–winning critic, which is amazing, and you were writing for an audience who wanted dance pieces. The audience for dancing in terms of the words you would use—I'm not really into it myself, but I would know the word “pirouette.” I imagine there's a ton of words that you would know and use in your writing that wouldn't be so relevant for a wider audience. So we have to think about the audience as well. Sarah: Yes, absolutely. We want to be very thoughtful in our choice of words. If you distilled my book down to one single message, it is to think carefully. Not in the first draft, perhaps, and certainly not when we're speaking, because we speak so spontaneously. But in writing, where you put your thoughts down and then—hopefully, if you're not under too much deadline pressure—you can come back, give it another look, shape it, refine it, and really make sure that you've chosen your words with care. I feel like that's really what writing is all about—communicating one mind to another through this magnificent medium of language. Language is intentional, and having that intention in mind about what you want to share and what you want to communicate and how you want your readers to approach your work—well, that's up to you. That's the freedom I hope to be able to present to people who check out my book: here are some ways, here are some suggestions, here are some techniques and tips for issues that can arise. Really, once you've taken these in, I hope to fire your imagination and inspire you with being able to communicate what it is that you really have inside that you want to share. Jo: I think it is a book for falling in love with the joy of words again. You did mention deadlines, though, and the pressure. Especially for those of us who write genre fiction series, which is a lot of people listening, sometimes we might feel that we don't have the time for that. Do our readers appreciate it, or do they want story first? Sometimes is it too much? Where do you come down on balancing getting story over words? How long can we spend on finding beautiful words when we are writing another 70,000-word book? Sarah: I think that's an excellent point. I think story comes first. That's probably what first drives you to your desk—telling a story. Although it may not. The realities of writing are so vast and unlimited that it's very hard to come out with rules, and I don't write about rules. I really want to give suggestions and examples and insights, but I do think that story is absolutely tops. And that's the power of verbs, in fact. They can help us tell the stories with clarity and with efficiency. I do want to make sure that I'm being clear. I'm not advocating that before you ever sit down and write, or you write one sentence, you then go back and check every single word, because that wouldn't make any sense at all. The idea is to free yourself, free your imagination. These are ways to open your imagination up that maybe you haven't thought about before. But storytelling is primary, and the way that you tell it is going to be individual to every writer. It's useful to bear in mind that there are a lot of avenues one can take in terms of creating a scene or building a character and even evoking the landscape and the atmosphere, and we can look at verbs to help us do that. Jo: One of the biggest problems, I think, especially for new writers, is the passive voice versus more active voice. Can you give some examples of passive voice? Often in editing we're told to get rid of passive voice, but of course you do need it sometimes. Sarah: Yes. There's understandably a lot of confusion about passive voice. Just to have a tiny tidbit of grammar nerdery here: the voice of a verb refers to a very specific construction. It doesn't simply mean that the writer is expressing something in a boring way or taking on a dull subject. The voice of the verb tells you how it relates to the subject of the sentence. When the subject does the action—when it's doing the verb—then you have a verb in the active voice. But when the subject of the sentence is receiving the action, then it needs a verb in the passive voice. Here's an example. If I said, “Hey, Jo, guess what? My grandmother walked on the moon.” That's active voice. “My grandmother walked on the moon”—it's interesting, right? But if I said, “Hey, Jo, guess what? The moon was walked on.” You might be left thinking, “What? What am I supposed to take away from that? Is there more to the story?” “The moon was walked on”—well, that's the passive voice construction. There's no subject who did the walking. I haven't told you, and yet the subject was actually pretty important. My grandmother was the one who walked on the moon. So that's the frustration that often comes when we read the passive voice. We don't know the full story, and we might suspect: are they hiding something? Do they not really know who did the thing? It brings up a lot of questions. Especially in official situations. The classic example is “mistakes were made.” Officials love to say that because it puts nobody on the hook. Nobody is responsible. “Mistakes were made.” Well, who were they made by? They're not telling us. I heard this just recently, by one of the representatives here. This phrase is still being used: “Mistakes were made.” I think most people understand there's a bit of obfuscation. There is something being hidden. Now, there are times when the passive voice is perfectly fine. It's not necessary to say who did the action. If you say, “Joe Blow was arrested and charged with murder,” you pretty much have the full thing there. You don't need to say, “The police arrested him. The prosecutor filed the paperwork.” It's kind of assumed. If you just want to get to the point—he was arrested and charged with murder—that's sufficient. Maybe further down in the story you'll explain the circumstances, but you don't need them right there. Or say, “Fires are still being reported throughout the region.” In a news story, that's perfectly fine. We just need to know that fires are still happening. We don't necessarily need to know who's reporting it. More details may come later in the story, but right then it's perfectly fine. In news reports, in historical situations when we're giving a history, in scientific data and scientific reports, you often see the passive voice. It can be a perfectly good and oftentimes even more efficient way to tell something, but you don't want to lean into it and overuse it because it becomes very dull. When you don't have someone doing an action, it becomes very dull. Jo: As you've mentioned the legal side of things, and I'm reading a lot of academic papers at the moment. I'm doing another master's degree, and goodness me, I feel like sometimes it's designed to turn you off. Sarah: You are exactly right. I've come to that feeling too, and especially in seeing student work, where I feel like there is so much of that in academic writing, which students are reading and digesting. It naturally comes out of them, and it's a kind of cycle that's hard to break. Jo: Do you think it's a form of hedging? “Mistakes were made”—or anything legal—you are hedging it so it can be ambiguous. Whereas a strong verb—and you mentioned “your grandmother walked on the moon”—you are really making it very clear. If you want to hedge things, then using passive voice might be more appropriate. If you want to make it stronger, the activeness is important. Sarah: Yes. And it makes such a difference. I discovered this in my own work. I would read other critics, for example, and I would think, “I feel like the piece I've just written is kind of flat. It doesn't really have the effect I want, doesn't have any zip.” I would go and read other critics—not just dance critics, but other critics. It's so useful to just read other people in any type of writing that you're doing. I advocate doing a lot of reading. I would see that the pieces that really touched me, that really inspired me, had a lot of active voice constructions. They're not turning things around passively, which I think, as a young critic, I may have been doing because I was a little bit afraid to take a stand. Jo: Mm. Sarah: I think I see that in student work, that sometimes we don't want to take a stand, and so we hedge. But writing is intentional, and readers can pick up on that hedging. If you don't intend to hedge—in many cases it can be perfectly appropriate to be fuzzy for an effect that you want, or something like that in the context—but if you are hedging and you're trying to get away with it, like you don't want anyone to notice that you don't really want to give an opinion on this matter, it's going to be very clear. So it's better to address something directly. Jo: And make it stronger. I also wanted to ask you more about the writing career, because I, perhaps like many people listening, was like, I didn't even know you could make a career as a dance critic. Now I know you are not at the Washington Post any more, and it's possible that that role no longer exists—like a lot of writing roles. How has your writing career changed over the years? Do you have these various aspects of a portfolio career? We often talk about multiple streams of income on this show and how, as writers, we can't necessarily rely on one thing. Sarah: Yes, exactly. It's true, there is no longer a dance critic at the Washington Post. The position was eliminated. It's a shame, and it's happening to critics in all fields, in all media organisations, sadly. That's where, for me at least, having that focal point was very key. A thing that I became comfortable writing about, that I could then spiral out and use the eyes and the brain that I had developed from writing about this certain focus for a while. Where can I take that? Oh, athletes. They also move. I began writing stories and pieces and essays about athletes that moved beautifully, beyond racking up statistics about winning. They were just gorgeous to look at, just so pleasurable to watch. I started writing about the body language of political candidates in debate situations and so forth. Using my focal point to then widen my lens, to mix a metaphor, I guess. Having that subject matter and then broadening it out beyond the limits of the actual subject matter, broadening it out imaginatively into where I could find other places to use this perspective. That was really key for me. Say you are writing historical fiction or you're writing thrillers. I would imagine that you would develop a kind of expertise in things that I would find very difficult. Suspense, maybe, or political or police procedure, or what exactly was the weaponry in seventeenth-century France. How can you take that expertise and use it either in an aesthetic way or an actual factual way to address other topics? I think there are so many people that would be interested in what writers who have knowledge and expertise in anything can then use to show us something that we've overlooked. Something we always thought we knew, but that really, when you look at it this way, is reminiscent of how the scabbard was used in seventeenth-century France—or whatever it is, in whatever way. People are craving a new perspective on something they've overlooked or taken for granted. And that's where writers who have a body of work, or are interested in pursuing a certain topic. That's the promise that they have. They can work towards being able to enlighten us on so many other things that maybe only have a tangential connection, but they can make that connection for us. Jo: Fantastic. Where can people find you and your books online? Sarah: I am at SarahLKaufman.com. That's my website. My books are available on any website or bookshop that you want to order them from. Verb Your Enthusiasm comes out April 28th. I am not much on social media at the moment, but I do enjoy hearing feedback from readers, and there are ways to do that on my website. Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Sarah. That was great. Sarah: Thank you very much. I've enjoyed it.The post Verb Your Enthusiasm: Transform Your Writing With Stronger Verbs With Sarah Kaufman first appeared on The Creative Penn.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 10, 2026 is: halcyon • HAL-see-un • adjective Halcyon is most often used to describe a happy and successful time in the past that is remembered as being better than today. It can also mean “calm, peaceful” or “prosperous, affluent.” // She does not regret retiring, but looks back fondly on the halcyon years of her career. See the entry > Examples: “The first half of Alice Winn's bestselling In Memoriam is set at Preshute, an English boys' boarding school in the early twentieth century. It is here, in the idyllic countryside, where the boys discuss poetry and get up to all sorts of high-jinks and japes, and where two students, Gaunt and Ellwood, fall in love. Then the boys are ejected into the horror and abyss of WWI trenches. When they are reunited, mentally and physically scarred, Preshute is but a dream and their adolescent love, a halcyon place that can only be returned to in memory.” — Madeleine Dunnigan, LitHub.com, 16 Jan. 2026 Did you know? Halcyon has drifted along contentedly in English for centuries, but it hatched from a tumultuous story. According to Greek mythology, Alkyone, the daughter of the god of the winds, became so distraught over her husband Ceyx's death at sea that she threw herself into the ocean to join him. The gods were moved by the couple's love, and took pity on them by turning them into halcyon birds, a bird identified with the kingfisher. (Kingfishers are known for plunging into water after prey.) According to the legend, the birds built their nests on the sea, which so charmed Alkyone's father that he created a period of unusual calm that lasted until the birds' eggs hatched. Our word halcyon reflects the story in multiple ways. When halcyon was first used in English in the 14th century it was as a noun referring to the mythical bird, and later to actual kingfishers as well. Adjective use developed in the 16th century and now most often evokes those calm waters: the word typically describes an idyllic time in the past.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 9, 2026 is: gallivant • GAL-uh-vant • verb To gallivant is to go or travel to many different places for pleasure. Gallivant is a somewhat informal word that is often applied when the user of the word does not approve of such pleasurable traveling. // They've been gallivanting all over town instead of studying for their finals. See the entry > Examples: “These days, she can be found gallivanting around the Upper West Side, catching the latest Broadway shows and occasionally hopping onstage to belt show tunes with the waitstaff at her beloved Times Square restaurant, where she remains hands-on with the business.” — McKenzie Beard, The New York Post, 18 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Back in the 14th century, gallant, a noun borrowed from the French word galant, referred to a fashionable young man. By the middle of the next century, it was being used more specifically to refer to such a man who was attentive to, and had a fondness for, the company of women. In the late 17th century, this “ladies' man” sense gave rise to the verb gallant to describe the process a suitor used to win a lady's heart, and “gallanting” became synonymous with “courting.” It's this verb gallant that is the likely source of gallivant, which originally meant “to act as a gallant” or “to go about usually ostentatiously or indiscreetly with members of the opposite sex.” Today, however, gallivant is more likely to describe pleasurable wandering than romancing.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 8, 2026 is: wistful • WIST-ful • adjective To be wistful is to have sad thoughts and feelings about something that you want to have or do, and especially about something that made you happy in the past. Wistful can also describe something, such as a smile or sigh, that shows or communicates such feelings. // As the car pulled away, Lea cast one last wistful glance at the house where she'd spent so many happy years. See the entry > Examples: "Postcards have always been an object of fascination for me. I remember flipping through photo albums as a young girl and coming across those sent to my parents, from people I had never met. When I asked who these people were, I would hear wistful stories." — Minoli Wijetunga, The Guardian (London), 10 Jan. 2026 Did you know? We see you there, dear reader, gazing silently up at the moon, heart aching to know the history of wistful, as if it could be divined on the lunar surface. And we'd like to ease your melancholy by telling you that the knowledge you seek—nay, pine for—is closer at hand. The word wistful comes from wistly, a now-obsolete word meaning "intently," and the similar-sounding wishful. Wistly, in turn, likely comes from whist, an old term meaning "silent." What's more certain is that our modern wistful is a great word to describe someone full of pensive yearning, or something inspiring such yearning.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 7, 2026 is: dudgeon • DUJ-un • noun Dudgeon is typically used in the phrase “in high dudgeon” to describe someone who is angry and offended by something they perceive to be unfair or wrong. // The customer stormed out of the store in high dudgeon after the manager refused to give them a refund for their purchase. See the entry > Examples: “She was in high dudgeon because her expensive lunch was punctuated by noise from a child ‘a real menace' whose parents, she said, appeared oblivious to the noise while staff … played with and entertained the tot. If the parents could afford the bill for a place like that, they could afford a babysitter, she snipped.” — Rachel Moore, The Eastern Daily Press (Norwich, England), 6 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Dudgeon is today most often used in the phrase “in high dudgeon” to describe someone in a fit of pique, or more colloquially, in a snit: they are angry and offended because of something they perceive as unfair or wrong. The word has been a part of the English language since at least the late 1500s, but its origins are a mystery. Conjectures connecting dudgeon to a Welsh word, dygen, meaning “malice,” have no basis. Also, there does not appear to be any connection to an even older dudgeon—a term once used for a dagger or a kind of wood out of which dagger handles were made.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 6, 2026 is: flamboyant • flam-BOY-ant • adjective Someone or something described as flamboyant has a very noticeable quality that attracts a lot of attention. Such a person or thing is often strikingly elaborate or colorful in their behavior or display. // Reality television attracts millions of viewers for its depictions of flamboyant, larger-than-life personalities living equally flamboyant lifestyles. See the entry > Examples: “[Helen] McCrory's flamboyant and perfectly drawn portrayal of Polly was the show's real treasure, a steel-willed matriarch unusually attuned to the mysticism of the Shelby family's Romani roots who also served as a ruthlessly pragmatic consigliere. ... McCrory's Polly was so electric that the show remained totally riveting any time she was onscreen.” — Jack Hamilton, Slate, 20 Mar. 2026 Did you know? Associate the word flamboyant with bananas flambé and the word's fiery etymology will be seared in your mind. Flamboyant, which was borrowed into English from French in the 19th century, can be traced back to the Old French word flambe, meaning “flame.” In its earliest uses flamboyant referred to an ornate style of Gothic architecture popular in France and Spain, which featured waving curves suggestive of flames. Eventually, the word developed a more general second sense for anything eye-catching or showy. And of course, flambe is also the origin of the English adjective flambé, which describes food flamboyantly dressed or served with flaming liquor.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 5, 2026 is: augur • AW-gur • verb To augur is to show or suggest, especially from omens, that something might happen in the future. Used most often in formal speech or writing, augur is often followed by an adverb, such as well. // The downturn augurs badly for the success of the business. See the entry > Examples: "Last March, almost exactly two decades after his ghost church appeared at the Whitney, [Banks] Violette put another destroyed structure on display: the canopy of an abandoned gas station split in half. ... This wreckage could only augur doom." — Rachel Wetzler, Artforum, 1 Feb. 2026 Did you know? In ancient Rome, augurs were official diviners whose function it was to divine whether the gods approved of a proposed undertaking, such as a military move. They did so by various means, among them observing the behavior of birds and examining the entrails of sacrificed animals. We doubt the Romans predicted that their verb augurāre, meaning "to foretell by augury," would evolve into an English verb meaning "presage or foretell," but in retrospect, augur's path must have been in the stars.