verdant

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 5, 2026 is: verdant • \VER-dunt\  • adjective Verdant describes something that is green in tint or color, or green because it is covered with growing plants. Verdant can also describe a person who is inexperienced or has not yet developed good judgment. // The golf course is noted for its tricky hazards and lush, verdant borders along its fairways. See the entry > Examples: “On the other side, the lusher Santa Cruz Mountains, a place of dank redwood forests, organic farming communes, and uppity vineyards, form a verdant curtain between the Valley and the ocean.” — Brian Barth, Front Street: Resistance and Rebirth in the Tent Cities of Techlandia, 2025 Did you know? English speakers have been using verdant as a ripe synonym of green since at least the 16th century, and as a descriptive term for inexperienced or naive people since the 19th century. (By contrast, the more experienced green has colored our language since well before the 12th century, and was first applied to inexperienced people in the 16th century.) Verdant traces back to the Old French word for “green,” vert, which itself is from the Latin word viridis. Some lesser-known words for shades of green in English include prasine (“having the green color of a leek”), smaragdine (“yellowish green in color like an emerald”), and another viridis descendent, viridescent (“slightly green”).

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 4, 2026 is: wiseacre • \WYZE-ay-ker\  • noun A wiseacre is someone who says or does things that are funny but annoying. Wiseacre is an informal and old-fashioned word, as well as a synonym of smart aleck. // Some wiseacre in the audience kept heckling the comedian throughout the performance. See the entry > Examples: "In 1982's hit action comedy 48 Hours, a young Eddie Murphy plays a wiseacre criminal on parole in order to help a veteran cop, played by Nick Nolte, solve a case." — Pete Hammond, Deadline, 4 Aug. 2025 Did you know? Given the spelling and definition of wiseacre, you might guess that the word was formed directly from the familiar adjective wise. And you might be wise to think so—a wiseacre, after all, is someone who thinks or pretends they're wiser (more crafty or knowing) than they are. But you would, alas, also be wrong. Unlike wisecrack and wisenheimer, wiseacre came to English not from wise but from the Middle Dutch word wijssegger, meaning "soothsayer." Wiseacre first appeared in English way back in the 16th century, while all those other wise words appeared centuries later. The etymologies of wiseacre and wise are not completely distinct, however; the ancestors of wiseacre are loosely tied to the same Old English root that gave us wise.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 3, 2026 is: adroit • \uh-DROYT\  • adjective Adroit describes someone or something that has or shows skill, cleverness, or resourcefulness in handling situations. // We marveled at how adroit the puppeteers were, the marionettes responding to each precise shift of their hands, each flick of their wrists. See the entry > Examples: “She offers here the most invigorating of performances, technically adroit but also informed by equal measures of artistry and youth, and there’s a humility to her singing, along with a sense of her character’s smallness in the face of life’s travails and machinations …” — Chris Jones, The Chicago Tribune, 2 Feb. 2026 Did you know? The meaning and history of adroit is straightforward, so we’ll get right to the point. English speakers borrowed the word with its meaning from French in the mid 1600s, but the word’s ultimate source is the Latin adjective directus, meaning “straight, direct.” Adroit entered English as a means for describing physically skillful sorts, but it came to be applied to those known for their expertise, cleverness, and resourcefulness too. Today, adroit most often describes things people do especially well.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 2, 2026 is: fawn • \FAWN\  • verb To fawn over or on someone (usually someone important or powerful) is to try to get their approval through praise, special attention, or flattery. Fawn is also sometimes used—especially but not exclusively of dogs—to mean “to show affection.” // Still new to celebrity, the musician blushed at the restaurant staff fawning over her during her recent hometown visit. // I’d only been gone five minutes but the puppy fawned on me like I’d been away for hours. See the entry > Examples: “Around my Paddington patch, my ragdoll cat, Runty the Magnificent, is a street celebrity—a magnet for residents and passersby to fawn over and photograph.” — Olivia Stewart, The Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, 10 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Language lovers, rejoice! If you’re the sort of person who fawns over etymology (one of the best sorts of people, in our opinion), then you’ll be glad to know the story of fawn: it comes ultimately from the Old English adjective fægen or fagan, meaning “glad,” by way of the Old English verb fagnian, meaning “to rejoice.” Hooray! But we’re not finished yet, my dear. Note that this fawn is not, despite appearances, related to the noun fawn that refers to a young deer. For that we can thank the Latin noun fetus, meaning “offspring.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 1, 2026 is: shenanigans • \shuh-NAN-ih-gunz\  • plural noun Shenanigans is an informal word used to refer to activity or behavior that is either not honest or proper, or is mischievous or high-spirited. Its oldest meaning, and the one most likely to be encountered as the singular shenanigan, is “a devious trick used especially for an underhanded purpose.” // The CEO resigned amid accusations of financial shenanigans and dubious deals. // The tween sleepover shenanigans involved goofy hats, fake mustaches, and giggles galore but everyone eventually fell asleep. See the entry > Examples: “Do you remember what it was like to be bored—like really bored? As a Gen Xer, I didn’t grow up scrolling social media or playing endless hours of ‘Minecraft’ to keep me busy; instead, I spent a fair amount of my free time after school crafting the perfect prank call. ... In retrospect, it was time well spent. Well, maybe. Some shenanigans may have gone too far.” — Elana Rabinowitz, The Los Angeles Times, 10 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Fool us once, shame on you; fool us twice, shame on us. Either way, we call it shenanigans, employing a word whose history is as slippery as the monkey business it names. We know that the word likely first appeared in print in the 1850s in the western United States. But most theories of its genesis assert that it was born in the British Isles, with potential origin words referring to such things as silly behavior, feigned illness, and a sweet rum-beer libation. Although the “underhanded trick” sense of the word is oldest, the most common senses in use now are those referring to the dishonest or improper activity of “political shenanigans,” or to the high-spirited or mischievous behavior of “youthful shenanigans.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 31, 2026 is: genteel • \jen-TEEL\  • adjective Genteel means “of or relating to people who have high social status” and can be used as a somewhat old-fashioned synonym of aristocratic. It can also be used to describe something with a quietly appealing or polite quality, as in “genteel manners.” // Their genteel upbringing shaped the way they viewed the world. See the entry > Examples: “The duo met at Oxford and were briefly bankers. They understand the genteel, often mysterious (at least to Americans) mores of the British upper class ...” — Jacqueline Cutler, The Daily Beast, 28 Jan. 2026 Did you know? In A History of the Novel (1975), David Freedman wrote of Theodore Dreiser, “Certainly there was nothing genteel about Dreiser, either as a man or novelist.” Indeed, few of the many uses of the adjective genteel would seem to apply to the author. When it comes to the use of genteel to describe people or things of or related to the upper class of society, for example, Dreiser doesn’t fit the bill: unlike many of his contemporaries, including Edith Wharton, Dreiser came from poverty. His novels, too, are hardly genteel in the sense of “striving to maintain the appearance of superior or middle-class social status or respectability.” Sister Carrie, his best known work, features a heroine who goes unpunished for her transgressions against conventional sexual morality. In fact, the book so troubled the genteel (“polite”) sensibilities of Dreiser’s publishers that they limited the book’s advertising, and it initially sold fewer than 500 copies. Sister Carrie is now considered a masterpiece, and Dreiser, according to Freedman, “the supreme poet of the squalid” who “felt the terror, the pity, and the beauty underlying the American Dream.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 30, 2026 is: oblivion • \uh-BLIV-ee-un\  • noun Oblivion can refer to the state of something that is not remembered or thought about any more, or to the state of being unconscious or unaware. It also sometimes refers to the state of being destroyed. // After so many days of exhaustingly difficult work, he longed for the oblivion of sleep. // The sandcastles of summer had long since been swept into oblivion by the ocean waves. See the entry > Examples: “... automobiles with manual transmission appear to be on a road to oblivion as technology transforms cars into computers on wheels.” — Michael Diedtke, The Columbian (Vancouver, Washington), 3 Jan. 2026 Did you know? Oblivion asks forgetfulness of us in both its meaning and etymology. The word’s Latin source, oblīvīscī, means “to forget, to put out of mind,” and since its 14th century adoption into English, oblivion has hewed close to meanings having to do with forgetting. The word has also long had an association with the River Lethe which according to Greek myth flowed through the Underworld and caused anyone who drank its water to forget their past; 17th century poet John Milton wrote about “Lethe the River of Oblivion” in Paradise Lost. The adjective oblivious (“lacking remembrance, memory, or mindful attention”) followed oblivion a century later, but not into oblivion—both words have proved obdurate against the erosive currents of time.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 29, 2026 is: cadge • \KAJ\  • verb To cadge something is to persuade someone to give it to you for free. Cadge can also mean “to take, use, or borrow (something) without acknowledgment.” // I don’t know how, but my brother always manages to cadge an extra scoop of ice cream on his sundaes. // The last line of the poem is cadged from Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” See the entry > Examples: “How could a convenient route between housing estates—and friends’ homes—be an issue? Let me explain—it was all Sherlock Holmes’ fault. Him and his terrifying Hound Of The Baskervilles. … There were occasions when my imagination took over completely and I ended up going the long way round through the busier, better-lit roads of the village. Those beasties wouldn't dare to come off the greens and into the gardens. I never admitted this to any of my friends, not even those brave enough to cadge a lift from me on occasion.” — Mary-Jane Duncan, The Press and Journal (Scotland), 18 Oct. 2025 Did you know? Long ago, peddlers traveled the British countryside, each with a packhorse or a horse and cart—first carrying produce from rural farms to town markets, then returning with small wares to sell to country folk. The Middle English word for such traders was cadgear; Scottish dialects rendered the term as cadger. The verb cadge was created as a back-formation of cadger (which is to say, it was formed by removal of the “-er” suffix). At its most general, cadger meant “carrier,” and the verb cadge meant “to carry.” More specifically, the verb meant to go about as a cadger or peddler. By the 1800s, it was used when someone who posed as a peddler turned out to be more of a beggar, from which arose the present-day use of the verb cadge for the action of trying to get something for free by persuading or imposing on another person.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 28, 2026 is: fiscal • \FISS-kul\  • adjective Fiscal is used to describe things relating to money and especially to the money a government, business, or organization earns, spends, and owes. // The recent change in leadership was essential for addressing the fiscal health of the university. See the entry > Examples: “The Town of Java [New York] ... has received exemplary audits from the State Comptroller’s Office, while continuing to streamline government and demonstrate fiscal responsibility.” — The Daily News (Batavia, New York), 13 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Fiscal comes from the Latin noun fiscus, meaning “basket” or “treasury.” In ancient Rome, fiscus was the term for the treasury controlled by the emperor, where the money was literally stored in baskets and was collected primarily in the form of revenue from the provinces. Fiscus also gave English confiscate, which is most familiar as a verb meaning “to seize by or as if by authority,” but can additionally refer to the forfeiting of private property to public use. Today, we often encounter fiscal in “fiscal year,” a 12-month accounting period not necessarily coinciding with the calendar year.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 27, 2026 is: dross • \DRAHSS\  • noun Something referred to as "dross" is of low value or quality. Dross may also be used as a technical term to refer to unwanted material that is removed from a mineral to make it better. // He's a skilled editor who has a talent for turning literary dross into gold. See the entry > Examples: "Hollywood optimists argue that AI's greatest weakness will be originality. After all, viewers already complain of being deluged with formulaic, low-budget dross churned out by streaming platforms because an algorithm deems it popular." — Tom Leonard, The Scottish Daily Mail, 23 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Dross has been a part of the English language since Anglo-Saxon times. It comes from the Old English word drōs, meaning "dregs," those solid materials that fall to the bottom of a container full of a liquid such as coffee or wine. While dross today is used to refer to anything of low value or quality, its earliest use is technical: dross is a metallurgy term referring to solid scum that forms on the surface of a metal when it is molten or melting—remove the dross to improve the metal. The metallurgical sense of the word is often hinted at in its general use, with dross set in contrast to gold, as when 19th century British poet Christina Rossetti wrote "Besides, those days were golden days, / Whilst these are days of dross."