GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Grandiose [gran-dee-OHSS] 📖 What It Means: Grandiose is usually used disapprovingly to describe something that seems impressive or is intended to be impressive, but that is either not possible or practical. 📰 Example: The long-vacant historic building has finally been purchased, and the developer has announced grandiose plans to make it the center of a new theater district. 💬 In Context: “Henry [VIII] was a leader known for his grandiose presentation, a love of dramatic rhetoric and self-promotion, and a fondness for blaming others. He carefully curated his image, issuing official portraits and closely managing public appearances. His reign concentrated power in one man and his obsessions.” — Philippa Gregory, LitHub.com, 29 Oct. 2025 💡 Did You Know? When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or effect, but while grand may lend its noun a bit of dignity (i.e., “we had a grand time”), grandiose often implies a whiff of pretension. The difference between a grand plan for the city park and a grandiose one, for example, might be the difference between a tasteful fountain and a garden full of topiaries cut in the shapes of 19th century literary figures. So if you’re choosing between the two, a helpful mnemonic might be that the extra letters in grandiose suggest that one’s ideas, claims, promises, schemes, dreams—you get the idea—are a bit extra. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Noel [noh-EL] 📖 What It Means: When capitalized, Noel refers to Christmas or the Christmas season. Uncapitalized, noel refers to a Christmas carol. 📰 Example: We were greeted at the door by a group of carolers singing noels. 💬 In Context: “The meeting began with a touch of holiday spirit as members of the Woodland Park High School Madrigals sang three selections. The first was a Noel song with a medieval/renaissance feel that was well matched to their festive costumes. They followed with the popular ‘Carol of the Bells’ and ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas.’” — Doug Fitzgerald, The Pikes Peak (Colorado) Courier, 9 Dec. 2024 💡 Did You Know? English speakers borrowed noel from the French word noël, which is also used for both the Christmas holiday and a Christmas carol. It can be traced further back to the Latin word natalis, which can mean “birthday” as a noun or “of or relating to birth” as an adjective. (The English adjective natal has the same meaning and is also an offspring of natalis.) Noels were being sung in Latin and French for centuries before English-speakers started using the word to refer to Christmas carols in the 18th century. An early use of noel (spelled Nowel) to mean “Christmas” can be found in the text of the late 14th-century Arthurian legend Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Hark Back [HAHRK-BAK] 📖 What It Means: Harking back can be about turning back to an earlier topic or circumstance, as in "a storyteller harking back to his youth," or it can be about going back to something as an origin or source, as in "a style that harks back to the turn of the previous century." 📰 Example: The dinner conversation harked back to the lunch debate over what counts as a traditional holiday meal. 💬 In Context: "The single harks back to Chenier's heyday when his music was produced on 45s and put into jukeboxes, says [Maureen] Loughran." — Alicia Ault, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 June 2025 💡 Did You Know? Hark, a very old word meaning "to listen," was used as a cry in hunting. The master of the hunt might cry "Hark! Forward!" or "Hark! Back!" The cries became set phrases, both as nouns and verbs. Thus, a "hark back" was a retracing of a route by dogs and hunters, and to "hark back" was to turn back along the path. From its use in hunting, the verb acquired its current figurative meanings concerned with returning to the past. The variants hearken and harken (also very old words meaning "to listen") are also used, with and without back, as synonyms of hark back. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Bespoke [bih-SPOHK] 📖 What It Means: Bespoke describes something that is custom-made—that is, made to fit the needs or requirements of a particular person. 📰 Example: As a tailor, Lana specialized in crafting bespoke clothing for her clients, each piece unique and suited to their tastes. 💬 In Context: “The vehicles are bespoke machines with every little detail thought of, from embroidered seats to custom floor mats to retro paint jobs.” — Charlie Berrey, SlashGear.com, 10 Nov. 2025 💡 Did You Know? In the English language of yore, the verb bespeak had various meanings, including “to speak,” “to accuse,” and “to complain.” In the 16th century, bespeak acquired another meaning: “to order.” It is from that sense that we get the adjective bespoke, referring to clothes and other things that are ordered before they are made. Bespoke has enjoyed a spike in usage in recent years, perhaps due to consumer trends that champion all things artisanal over those that are prefab. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Temporize [TEM-puh-ryze] 📖 What It Means: To temporize is to avoid making a decision or giving a definite answer in order to have more time. 📰 Example: Pressured by voters on both sides of the issue, the congressman temporized. 💬 In Context: "The question is, Did you eat the last piece of pie? And the politician who ate the last piece of pie doesn't want to say yes, because they might get in trouble. Doesn't want to say no, because that's an outright lie. So they waver, they equivocate, they temporize, they put things in context, and they talk like a politician." — David Frum, The Atlantic (The David Frum Show podcast), 21 May 2025 💡 Did You Know? Temporize comes from the Middle French word temporiser, which in turn likely traces back via Medieval Latin temporizāre, "to delay," to the Latin noun tempus, meaning "time." Tempus is also the root of such words as tempo, contemporary, and temporal. If you need to buy some time, you might resort to temporizing, but you probably won't win admiration for doing so, as the word typically carries a negative connotation. For instance, a political leader faced with a difficult issue might temporize by talking vaguely about possible solutions without actually doing anything. The point of such temporizing is to avoid taking definitive—and possibly unpopular—action, in hopes that the problem will somehow go away. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Hibernaculum [hye-ber-NAK-yuh-lum] 📖 What It Means: Hibernaculum (plural hibernacula) refers to a shelter occupied during the winter by a dormant animal, such as an insect, snake, bat, or marmot. 📰 Example: Local scientists are studying the longevity of bats who use bridges and other aboveground hibernacula versus that of bats who roost all winter in subterranean caves. 💬 In Context: “Adult female bees begin looking for a hibernation location, or hibernaculum, in the fall. If the gardener is planning to deadhead any spent flowers from the summer, aim to prune stems at varying heights (8" to 24") as a nesting site for these bees. Many perennial flowers and shrubs have pithy stems that will serve as a good location. A few common Oklahoma garden plants that are good candidates include roses, purple coneflower, salvia, bee balm, and sunflowers.” — Sherry Clark, The Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star, 8 Oct. 2025 💡 Did You Know? If you’re afraid of snakes or bats, you probably won’t enjoy thinking about hibernacula, where hundreds, even thousands, of these creatures might be passing the wintry months. Other creatures also use hibernacula, though many of these tend to be less crowded. The word hibernaculum has been used for the burrow of a woodchuck, for instance, as well as for a cozy caterpillar cocoon attached to a wintry twig, and for the spot in which a frog has buried itself in mud. Hibernacula are all around us and have been around for a long, long time, but we have only called them such since the late 1700s, making hibernaculum only a few decades older than the more familiar verb hibernate. Both words come from the Latin verb hibernare, meaning “to pass the winter,” which in turn comes from hibernus, meaning “winter.” 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Decorous [DECK-er-us] 📖 What It Means: Decorous is a formal adjective used to describe an attitude or behavior characterized by propriety and good taste. 📰 Example: The ceremony was conducted with a decorous solemnity. 💬 In Context: “... Elizabeth reveals, later, that she felt she never belonged to the decorous world of parties and corsets and curls and feathers on the head ...” — Ryan Lattanzio, Indie Wire, 13 Oct. 2025 💡 Did You Know? One of the earliest recorded uses of decorous appears in a book titled The Rules of Civility (1671): “It is not decorous to look in the glass, to comb, brush, or do any thing of that nature to ourselves, whilst the said person be in the Room.” This rule of thumb may be a bit outdated; like many behaviors once deemed unbecoming, public primping is unlikely to offend in modern times. Though mores shift, decorous lives on to describe timeless courtesies like polite speech, proper attire, and (ahem) covering one’s cough. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Veracity [vuh-RASS-uh-tee] 📖 What It Means: Veracity is a formal word that can refer to truth or accuracy, or to the quality of being truthful or honest. 📰 Example: The jury seemed not to doubt the veracity of the witness. 💬 In Context: "Raise your hand if you've been questioning the veracity of real events, news stories and images posted on social media lately. It used to be we'd have to tiptoe around a minefield of hoaxes only once a year, on April 1. But thanks to the proliferation of misinformation spawned by artificial intelligence, every day on the internet is an exercise in judgment and media literacy." — Laura Yuen, The Hamilton (Ontario) Spectator, 9 Oct. 2025 💡 Did You Know? Veracity has been in use since the early 17th century, and we can honestly tell you that it comes from the Latin adjective vērāx, "truthful," which in turn comes from the earlier verus, "true." Verus also gives us the words verity ("the quality of being true"), verify ("to establish the truth of"), and verisimilitude ("the appearance of truth"), among other words. In addition, vērāx is the root of the word veraciousness, a somewhat rarer synonym and cousin of veracity. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Jaunty [JAWN-tee] 📖 What It Means: Something described as jaunty is lively in manner or appearance. Jaunty can also describe something, such as an article of clothing, that suggests a lively and confident quality. 📰 Example: The server whistled a jaunty tune as she wiped the tables and set out fresh flowers in preparation for the day’s diners. 💬 In Context: “He stood at the front of the room and announced that we would begin with a quiz, which we all failed because the quiz was over material that we were supposed to have covered during the last class. When he handed the quizzes back to us after the break, he did so in a frenetic, almost jaunty way, running up and down the aisles and announcing our grades—‘Zero, zero, zero’—loudly before tossing the quizzes down in front of us ...” — Lori Ostlund, Are You Happy?: Stories, 2025 💡 Did You Know? Does throwing on a jaunty hat make someone appear more genteel? Maybe, but something more definitive links the words: both jaunty and genteel come from the French word gentil, meaning “of aristocratic birth.” Genteel was borrowed first to describe things associated with aristocratic people. Jaunty joined the language just a few years later in the mid-17th century as a synonym of stylish and also as a synonym for genteel. While genteel has maintained its associations of propriety and high social class, jaunty has traipsed into less stuffy territory as a descriptor of tunes and hats and other things that suggest lively confidence. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Espouse [ih-SPOWZ] 📖 What It Means: To espouse an ideology, belief, etc., is to take it up and support it as a cause. Espouse is usually encountered in formal speech and writing. 📰 Example: The article explores some of the lesser-known viewpoints espoused by the charismatic leader. 💬 In Context: “Crammed into a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village, they [Yoko Ono and John Lennon] immersed themselves in the city’s counterculture, absorbing progressive politics whenever they weren’t glued to the television set. Lennon’s celebrity secured the duo a large platform to espouse these ideas ...” — Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Pitchfork, 11 Oct. 2025 💡 Did You Know? As you might guess, the words espouse and spouse are hitched, both coming from the Latin verb spondēre, meaning “to promise” or “to betroth.” In fact, the two were once completely interchangeable, with each serving as a noun meaning “a newly married person” or “a partner in marriage” and also as a verb meaning “to marry.” Their semantic separation began when the noun espouse fell out of use. Nowadays, espouse is almost exclusively encountered as a verb used in the figuratively extended sense “to commit to and support as a cause.” 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Conversant [kun-VER-sunt] 📖 What It Means: Conversant, usually used in the phrase "conversant with," describes someone who has knowledge of or experience with something. 📰 Example: The ideal candidate for the sommelier position will have expert knowledge of the various wines served in the restaurant and be conversant with the rich world of viniculture. 💬 In Context: "The advantages of franchise expansion are obvious. These shows benefit from name recognition and a dedicated audience, as well as writers, producers and crew members already conversant with that audience's expectations." — Alexis Soloski, The New York Times, 6 July 2025 💡 Did You Know? The adjectives conversant and conversational both descend from the Latin verb conversari, meaning "to associate with." Conversant dates to the Middle Ages; an early meaning of the word was simply "having familiar association." One way to associate with others is to have a conversation with them—in other words, to talk. For a short time in the 19th century conversant could mean "relating to or suggesting conversation," but for the most part that meaning stayed with conversational while conversant went in a different direction. Today, conversant is sometimes used, especially in the United States, with the meaning "able to talk in a foreign language," as in "she is conversant in several languages," but it is more often associated with knowledge or familiarity, as in "conversant with the issues." 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Dreidel [DRAY-dul] 📖 What It Means: A dreidel is a 4-sided toy marked with Hebrew letters and spun like a top in a game of chance. The game, played by children especially at Hanukkah, is also called dreidel. 📰 Example: All the kids in the family look forward to playing dreidel together during Hanukkah. 💬 In Context: “The Jewish tradition has always been syncretic, adapting and responding to the culture around it, he [Rabbi Steven Philp] said. Hanukkah is ‘a great example of this,’ Philp said, noting that the holiday’s traditions—like spinning the dreidel, eating latkes or potato pancakes, and munching on ... jelly-filled doughnuts—are customs that were borrowed from neighboring cultures over time.” — Kate Heather, The Chicago Sun-Times, 25 Dec. 2024 💡 Did You Know? If your dreidel is spinning beneath the glow of the menorah, it’s probably the Jewish festival of lights known as Hanukkah. The holiday celebrates the miracle of a small amount of oil—enough for one day—burning for eight days in the Temple of Jerusalem. And though it’s a toy, the dreidel’s design is very much an homage: on each of its four sides is inscribed a Hebrew letter—nun, gimel, he, and shin—which together stand for Nes gadol haya sham, meaning “A great miracle happened there.” (In Israel, the letter pe, short for po, “here,” is often used instead of shin). In the game of dreidel, each letter bears its own significance: the dreidel is spun and depending on which letter is on top when it lands, the player’s currency, or gelt, is added to or taken from the pot. Nun means the player does nothing; gimel means the player gets everything; he means the player gets half; and shin means the player adds to the pot. Wherever you land on holiday traditions, we wish you words of gimel: gratitude, grub, and, of course, gaiety. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Multitudinous [mul-tuh-TOO-duh-nus] 📖 What It Means: Multitudinous is a formal word with meanings that relate to multitudes. It can mean “existing in a great multitude”—that is, “very many”; or “including a multitude of individuals”; or “existing in or consisting of innumerable elements or aspects.” 📰 Example: The two old friends reminisced about the multitudinous ways in which their lives had changed. 💬 In Context: “Launched as Holton’s artistic inquiry into his own Chinese heritage, the project has evolved into a profound examination of family dynamics, migration, and cultural hybridity in contemporary New York, where the American identity is multitudinous.” — Natasha Gural, Forbes, 11 June 2025 💡 Did You Know? “I am large, I contain multitudes.” So wrote Walt Whitman in his most celebrated poem, “Song of Myself.” He was expressing his ability to hold within himself contradictory statements, facets, opinions, beliefs, etc. Another, if less poetic, way of saying “I contain multitudes” might be “I am multitudinous,” using the sense of that five-syllable word meaning “existing in or consisting of innumerable elements or aspects.” Multitudinous doesn’t have a lot of meanings—three to be exact—but each one concerns, well, a lot. In addition to serving Whitmanesque purposes as noted above, multitudinous is the kind of highly expressive word that you can rely upon when you want something a little more emphatic than plain old numerous, as in “multitudinous possibilities.” Lastly, its original sense—still in use today—is a synonym of populous meaning “including a multitude of individuals,” as in “the multitudinous city.” 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Alleviate [uh-LEE-vee-ayt] 📖 What It Means: To alleviate something is to make it less painful, difficult, or severe. Alleviate can also mean "to partially remove or correct." 📰 Example: There's no cure for the common cold, but there are various treatments that may alleviate some of the symptoms. 💬 In Context: "The funds are meant to alleviate monetary barriers and enhance the fashion industry's talent pipeline." — Rosemary Feitelberg, Footwear News, 30 Oct. 2025 💡 Did You Know? Now for a bit of light reading. Alleviate comes from Latin levis, meaning "having little weight." (Levis also gave rise to the English adjective light as in "not heavy.") In its early days during the 16th century, alleviate could mean both "to cause (something) to have less weight" or "to make (something) more tolerable." The literal "make lighter" sense is no longer used, and today only the "relieve, lessen" sense remains. Incidentally, not only is alleviate a synonym of relieve, it's also a cousin: relieve comes from Latin levare ("to raise"), which in turn comes from levis. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Waggish [WAG-ish] 📖 What It Means: Waggish describes someone who is silly and playful, and especially someone who displays a mischievous sense of humor. The word can also describe things that such a person might do or possess. 📰 Example: He had a waggish disposition that could irk adults but typically delighted children. 💬 In Context: “[Patricia] Lockwood began her writing life quietly, as a poet. She found her first major audience on Twitter, posting self-proclaimed ‘absurdities’ ... that quickly came to define the medium’s zany, waggish ethos ...” — Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2025 💡 Did You Know? One who is waggish acts like a wag. What, then, is a wag? It has nothing to do with a dog’s tail; in this case a wag is a clever person prone to joking. Though light-hearted in its use and meaning, the probable source of this particular wag is grim: it is thought to be short for waghalter, an obsolete English word that translates as gallows bird, a gallows bird being someone thought to be deserving of hanging (wag being the familiar wag having to do with movement, and halter referring to a noose). Despite its gloomy origins, waggish is now often associated with humor and playfulness—a wag is a joker, and waggery is merriment or practical joking. Waggish can describe the prank itself as well as the prankster type; the class clown might be said to have a “waggish disposition” or be prone to “waggish antics.” 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Leviathan [luh-VYE-uh-thun] 📖 What It Means: Leviathan is a word with literary flair that can refer broadly to something very large and powerful, or more narrowly to a large sea animal, or a totalitarian state having a vast bureaucracy. 📰 Example: Towering leviathans of the forest, giant sequoias often reach heights of more than 200 feet. 💬 In Context: “These are dim days for the leviathan merchants. The smart whaling families have diversified and will hang onto their wealth for years to come. ... The less smart, those convulsed by the strange desire to continue doing what had always been done, who consider it a divinely issued directive to rid the waves of great fish, now face a problem: the Atlantic whale that built their houses and ships has seemingly wised up ...” — Ethan Rutherford, North Sun, or The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther: A Novel, 2025 💡 Did You Know? Old Testament references to a huge sea monster, Leviathan (in Hebrew, Liwyāthān), are thought to have been inspired by an ancient myth in which the god Baal slays a multiheaded sea monster. Leviathan appears in the Book of Psalms as a sea serpent that is killed by God and then given as food to creatures in the wilderness, and it is mentioned in the Book of Job as well. After making a splash in English in the 1300s, the word Leviathan began to be used, capitalized and uncapitalized, for enormous sea creatures both imagined and real—including as a synonym of whale over 100 times in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, as in “ere the Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan.” Today, leviathan can be used for anything large and powerful, from ships to corporations. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Grift [GRIFT] 📖 What It Means: To grift is to use dishonest tricks to illegally take money or property. 📰 Example: The email scammer shamelessly grifted thousands of dollars from unwitting victims. 💬 In Context: "When the families demanded he return the jewellery he had grifted from them he arranged meetings and then did not show." — Peter Spriggs, The Echo (South Essex, England), 31 Oct. 2025 💡 Did You Know? Someone who grifts is a thief, but of a particular sort: they illegally obtain money or property by means of cleverness or deceit, and do not usually resort to physical force or violence. A grifter might be a pickpocket, a crooked gambler, a scammer, or a con artist. The most plausible etymology we have for the murky term is that grift is an early 20th century alteration of graft, a slightly older word which refers to the acquisition of money or property in dishonest or questionable ways. Both grift and graft have noun and verb forms. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Paltry [PAWL-tree] 📖 What It Means: Paltry is a formal word that can describe something that is very small or too small in amount, or something that has little meaning, importance, or worth. 📰 Example: They're offering a paltry salary for the position. 💬 In Context: "When the witty and wry English fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett interviewed Bill Gates for GQ in 1995, only 39% of Americans had access to a home computer. According to the Pew Research Center, the number who were connected to the internet was a paltry 14%." — Ed Simon, LitHub.com, 25 Nov. 2024 💡 Did You Know? Before paltry was an adjective, it was a noun meaning trash. That now-obsolete noun came from palt or pelt, a dialect term referring to a piece of coarse cloth, or more broadly, to trash. The adjective paltry, which dates to the mid-16th century, originally described things considered worthless, or of very low quality, but it's gained a number of meanings over the centuries, none of which are complimentary. A paltry house might be neglected and unfit for occupancy; a paltry trick is a trick that is low-down and dirty; a paltry excuse is a poor one; and a paltry sum is small and insufficient. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Bravado [bruh-VAH-doh] 📖 What It Means: Bravado refers to confident or brave talk or behavior that is intended to impress other people. 📰 Example: She tells the stories of her youthful exploits with enough bravado to invite suspicion that they're embellished a bit. 💬 In Context: "One problem that exists in the whitewater community overall is that people don't always understand the basic elements associated with water and their ignorance and bravado often lead to an incident where someone gets injured or killed." — Tracy Hines, The Durango (Colorado) Herald, 19 Oct. 2025 💡 Did You Know? Displays of bravado may be show-offish, daring, reckless, and inconsistent with good sense—take, for example, the spectacular feats of stuntpeople—but when successful, they are still likely to be met with shouts of "bravo!" Celebrities, political leaders, corporate giants, and schoolyard bullies, however, may show a different flavor of bravado: one that suggests an overbearing boldness that comes from arrogance or from being in a position of power. The word bravado originally comes from the Italian adjective bravo, meaning "wild" or "courageous," which English can also thank for the more common brave. 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Enigmatic [en-ig-MAT-ik] 📖 What It Means: Something or someone described as enigmatic is mysterious and difficult to understand. 📰 Example: The band’s lead singer has always been an enigmatic figure, refusing to use social media or even sit for interviews. 💬 In Context: “For thirty years, Perlefter’s carpet hung peacefully on the wall in the museum, delighting visitors with its beauty, its unusual palette, enigmatic motifs and its echoes of four empires.” — Dorothy Armstrong, Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets, 2025 💡 Did You Know? The noun enigma can refer to a puzzle, a riddle, a question mark. It’s no mystery then, that the adjective enigmatic describes what is hard to solve or figure out. An enigmatic person, for example, may be someone with a bit of je ne sais quoi. What’s behind a stranger’s enigmatic smile? Your guess is as good as ours. Does the vocabulary in the short story you’re reading render it a tad enigmatic? Better grab a dictionary! Both enigma and enigmatic come from the Greek verb ainissesthai, meaning “to speak in riddles.” 🔗

Word of the Day: Grandiose

When it comes to bigness, there’s grand and then there’s grandiose. Both words can be used to describe something impressive in size, scope, or ...

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