sui generis

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 31, 2025 is: petulant • \PET-chuh-lunt\  • adjective Petulant describes a person who is angry and annoyed, or an attitude or behavior showing the emotions of such a person. // I didn't appreciate being accused of acting like a petulant toddler. // Her tone became petulant when she realized that the items on sale were no longer available. See the entry > Examples: “When Moira reached her mother on the phone, it was hard to take in any information other than that she was being sent away. ‘Babysitting and secretarial work?’ Moira said without saying hello. ‘Organizing lessons?’ ‘Hello, Moira,’ Nina said. ‘Let’s drop this petulant teenager routine.’ ‘I am a petulant teenager.’” — Keziah Weir, The Mythmakers: A Novel, 2023 Did you know? Petulant may have changed its meaning over the years, but it has retained its status as “word most people would not use to describe themselves in a job interview.” Hailing from Middle French and Latin, petulant began its English tenure in the late 16th century with the meaning recorded in our unabridged dictionary as “wanton or immodest in speech or behavior”—in other words, “lewd” or “obscene.” The word eventually softened, at least somewhat, from describing those who are forward in—shall we say—prurient ways, to those who are forward by being merely rude and angrily bold. Today the word is most commonly used to describe someone acting snippy and snippety, snappish and snappy, displaying an often childish ill or short temper of the kind that tends to arise from annoyance at not getting one’s way.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 30, 2025 is: doppelgänger • \DAH-pul-gang-er\  • noun A doppelgänger is someone who looks very much like another person. In literary use, doppelgänger refers to a ghost that closely resembles a living person. // I saw your doppelgänger at the movies yesterday and almost waved hello before I realized they weren’t you. // In one of the creepiest parts of the story, the main character is haunted by a doppelgänger. See the entry > Examples: “When [Timothée] Chalamet himself briefly appeared at his own [celebrity look-alike] contest, popping up between two of his doppelgängers, the crowd was thrilled, but the contestants were somewhat diminished, all of the discrepancies emphasized between his face and their own.” — Amanda Hess, The New York Times, 22 Nov. 2024 Did you know? According to German folklore, all living creatures have an identical, but invisible, spirit double. These second selves are distinct from ghosts, which appear only after death, and are sometimes described as the spiritual opposite or negative of their living counterparts. English speakers borrowed both the concept of the doppelgänger and the German word for it (from doppel-, meaning “double,” and -gänger, meaning “goer”) in the mid-1800s, but today the English word typically has a more quotidian use, referring simply to a living person who closely resembles another living person.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 29, 2025 is: quibble • \KWIB-ul\  • verb To quibble is to argue or complain about small, unimportant things. Quibble can also mean "to evade the point of an argument by making trivial or frivolous objections." // Why are you quibbling over such a small amount of money? // People ignored the main point of the speech and quibbled about its length. See the entry > Examples: "In 'Louisa, Please Come Home,' one of Jackson's most deeply affecting stories, a girl on the cusp of womanhood runs away from home and disappears into a new life in a new city, where she finds a room in a boarding house and a job in a stationery store. Jackson's agent, who judged it 'a powerful and brilliant horror story,' quibbled with her decision to leave the character's motive unexplained, but it's clear that Louisa doesn't need a reason to run away. She wants simply to disappear …" — Ruth Franklin, introduction to The Lottery and Other Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson, 2025 Did you know? There's not much to quibble about when it comes to the origins of the verb quibble: it followed the noun quibble, meaning "an evasion of or shift from the point" and "a minor objection or criticism," into the language in the mid-17th century. That word is likely a diminutive of a now-obsolete noun quib, also referring to an evasion of or shift from the point. Quib, in turn, likely comes from a form of Latin qui, meaning "who," that is also a distant relation of our word who.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 28, 2025 is: facile • \FASS-ul\  • adjective Facile is a formal adjective that is used disapprovingly to describe something that is too simple, or that doesn’t show enough thought or effort. Facile can also be used for something done or achieved in a way that is considered too easy or that is easily accomplished or attained. It is sometimes used approvingly, however, for someone or something that works, moves, or performs well and very easily. // This problem requires more than just a facile solution. // After winning a facile victory over their archrivals, the team became the easy favorite to secure the championship. // The local author has received numerous plaudits for being a wonderfully facile writer. See the entry > Examples: “For a relatively straightforward hike, there’s a lot to hold your interest here. The trail passes an archery range in its second half, at which point the colorful, mounted targets are visible through the trees, as are archers wielding bow and arrow. Walking under the great arches of the 1922 San Rafael Bridge and the 1914 La Loma Bridge adds a touch of drama to an otherwise facile and peaceful hike.” — Deborah Vankin, The Los Angeles Times, 23 June 2024 Did you know? If you’ve been fretting over how to use the word facile properly, we’re here to put your mind at ease. The word’s origins provide a major clue and are quite easy to trace: facile glided into English (via Anglo-French) from the Latin adjective facilis, meaning “easy, accommodating, nimble,” ultimately from facere, “to make, bring about, perform, do.” And indeed, facile can be used as a synonym for easy in some situations, though it is more formal and usually carries with it something extra—namely, excess. Something described as facile, such as an argument, is too easily made or done, as in “offered only facile answers to complex questions,” implying undue haste or shallowness. And facile tears are too easily produced by the person shedding them, suggesting they are lacking in sincerity. But although facile often bears a whiff of tut-tutting judgment, such is not always the case: it can be used positively to describe someone who is poised and assured, with an easy grace, as in “a facile lecturer.” Similarly, a writer whose words flow easily and fluidly on the page may be said to pen “facile prose.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 27, 2025 is: brouhaha • \BROO-hah-hah\  • noun Brouhaha is a synonym of both uproar and hubbub that refers to great excitement or concern about something. // A brouhaha erupted over the bill, even though the opposing party stood to gain just as much from its passage. See the entry > Examples: “Ultimately, like much of the population, [mountain lion] P-22 seemed to be making do with what he had. His crawl-space sit-in, which dominated the local news media for a couple of days, felt like a moment of accommodation. In the face of feeble attempts to get him to move—lights were flashed, sticks were waved, a tennis-ball cannon was deployed—P-22 stared out with an imperturbable expression that members of cat households recognized instantly. It said, ‘What?’ At night, once the brouhaha had died down, P-22 slipped back into the park.” — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 3 Apr. 2023 Did you know? The English language borrowed brouhaha directly from French in the late 19th century, but its origins beyond that are uncertain—not the subject of a noisy brouhaha but perhaps a little modest debate. What’s less arguable is that brouhaha is fun to say, as are many of its synonyms, including hubbub, williwaw, hullabaloo, bobbery, and kerfuffle. Many of these, like brouhaha, tend to suggest a certain judgment that the reason for all the foofaraw is a bit silly, or at least not worth getting all worked up about. A dad joke, for example, might cause a brouhaha, even though it’s really no reason for an uproar to brew. Haha!

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 26, 2025 is: embellish • \im-BELL-ish\  • verb To embellish something is to make it more appealing or attractive with fanciful or decorative details. // The gift shop had cowboy shirts and hats embellished with beads and stitching. // As they grew older, the children realized their grandfather had embellished the stories of his travels abroad. See the entry > Examples: "Shell art isn't a new genre; it's been with us for centuries. The Victorians often framed their family photos with shells. ... The medium also came to the fore in the 1970s when everything was embellished with shells, from photo frames and mirrors to trinket boxes and even furniture." — Stephen Crafti, The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 June 2025 Did you know? Embellish came to English, by way of Anglo-French, from the Latin word bellus, meaning "beautiful." It's in good company: modern language is adorned with bellus descendants. Examples include such classics as beauty, belle, and beau. And the beauty of bellus reaches beyond English: its influence is seen in the French bel, a word meaning "beautiful" that is directly related to the English embellish. And in Spanish, bellus is evidenced in the word bello, also meaning "beautiful."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 25, 2025 is: sui generis • \soo-eye-JEN-uh-ris\  • adjective Sui generis is a formal adjective used to describe someone or something in a class or group of its own, or in other words, unlike anyone or anything else. // As a scholar, she is sui generis, head and shoulders above everyone else in her field. See the entry > Examples: “TV on the Radio, the celebrated group whose experimental amalgam of rock, post-punk, electronic, and soul made it sui generis in the 2000s New York scene, knew it was time for a break. It was 2019, and after nearly 20 years and five albums together, the nonstop demands of recording and touring had taken its creative and physical toll.” — Jason Newman, Rolling Stone, 16 Apr. 2025 Did you know? Many English words ultimately trace back to the Latin forms gener- or genus (which are variously translated as “birth,” “race,” “kind,” and “class”). Offspring of those roots include general, generate, generous, generic, and gender. But sui generis is truly a one-of-a-kind genus descendant that English speakers have used to describe singular things since the late 1600s. Its earliest uses were in scientific contexts, but where it once mostly characterized substances, principles, diseases, and even rocks thought to be the only representative of their class or group, its use expanded by the early 1900s, and it is now used more generally for anything that stands alone.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 24, 2025 is: panacea • \pan-uh-SEE-uh\  • noun A panacea is something that is regarded as a cure-all—that is, something that will make everything about a situation better. // The new program should help with the city’s housing crisis, but it’s no panacea. See the entry > Examples: “It was a mistake to regard and romanticize information as a panacea for the world’s problems. For they are completely different things: information, knowledge and wisdom. Every day we are bombarded with thousands of snippets of information, but there is very little knowledge, and no time to slow down to gain knowledge, much less wisdom.” — Elif Shafak, 1984: 75th Anniversary Edition by George Orwell, 2024 Did you know? The maxim “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” isn’t true, but belief in a miraculous botanical “cure for whatever ails ya” has existed for millennia and is at the root of the word panacea. In current use, panacea most often refers to a remedy—medical or otherwise—that inevitably falls far short of what some claim or hope it can do, but the word’s Latin and Greek forebears referred to plants with legit healing properties, including mints and yarrows. Both the Latin word panacēa and its Greek antecedent panákeia (from the word panakēs, meaning “all-healing”) were applied especially to flowering herbs (genus Opopanax) of the carrot family used to treat various ailments.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 24, 2025 is: panacea • \pan-uh-SEE-uh\  • noun A panacea is something that is regarded as a cure-all—that is, something that will make everything about a situation better. // The new program should help with the city’s housing crisis, but it’s no panacea. See the entry > Examples: “It was a mistake to regard and romanticize information as a panacea for the world’s problems. For they are completely different things: information, knowledge and wisdom. Every day we are bombarded with thousands of snippets of information, but there is very little knowledge, and no time to slow down to gain knowledge, much less wisdom.” — Elif Shafak, 1984: 75th Anniversary Edition by George Orwell, 2024 Did you know? The maxim “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” isn’t true, but belief in a miraculous botanical “cure for whatever ails ya” has existed for millennia and is at the root of the word panacea. In current use, panacea most often refers to a remedy—medical or otherwise—that inevitably falls far short of what some claim or hope it can do, but the word’s Latin and Greek forebears referred to plants with legit healing properties, including mints and yarrows. Both the Latin word panacēa and its Greek antecedent panákeia (from the word panakēs, meaning “all-healing”) were applied especially to flowering herbs (genus Opopanax) of the carrot family used to treat various ailments.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 23, 2025 is: logy • \LOH-ghee\  • adjective Like sluggish and groggy, logy describes a person who is not able to think or move normally because of being tired, sick, etc., or something that moves slowly and ploddingly. // The heavy meal left me feeling logy and in need of a nap. See the entry > Examples: "The picture moves at a stately pace that one supposes was considered period-appropriate but feels merely logy at times." — Glenn Kenny, The New York Times, 15 May 2025 Did you know? The origins of the word logy (sometimes spelled loggy) likely lie in the Dutch word log, meaning "heavy," a relation of the ancient German adjective luggich, meaning "lazy." The word shares no history with the log of campfires, which is centuries older and has probable Scandinavian roots. Likewise, it has no etymological connection to groggy, which describes someone weak and unsteady on the feet or in action. That word ultimately comes from the nickname of an English admiral: "Old Grog," concerned with the health of his crew, served diluted rum to his sailors, who returned the favor by dubbing the rum mixture grog. (Modern grog is typically rum, or another liquor, cut with water and served warm, sweetened, and with lemon.)