The word for today is… maverick (noun) - 1: an unbranded range animal, especially : a motherless calf 2: an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : When a client gave Samuel A. Maverick 400 cattle to settle a $1,200 debt, the
The word for today is… raffish (adjective) - 1: marked by or suggestive of flashy vulgarity or crudeness 2: marked by a careless unconventionality : rakish Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : Raffish sounds like it should mean "resembling raff." But what is raff? Originally, "raff" was a word meaning
The word for today is… hypochondria (noun) - : excessive concern about one's health especially when accompanied by imagined physical ailments ,specifically : illness anxiety disorder Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : In earlier times: "organs of the upper abdomen behind the ribs, including the liver and gallbladder, are thought to be
The word for today is… susurrous (adjective) - : full of whispering sounds Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : Susurrous derives from the Latin noun susurrus, meaning "a hum" or "a whisper," and may be a distant relative of swarm (think of the collective hum of a beehive). Susurrus is
The word for today is… argy-bargy (noun) - : a lively discussion : argument, dispute Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : Argy-bargy and its slightly older variant argle-bargle have been a part of British English since the second half of the 19th century. Argy and argle evolved in certain English and Scottish
The word for today is… Occam's razor (noun) - : a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms
The word for today is… jocose (adjective) - 1: given to joking : merry 2: characterized by joking : humorous Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : When you need a word to describe something (or someone) that causes or is intended to cause laughter, you might pick jocose or a synonym such as humorous, witty,
The word for today is… xeric (adjective) - : characterized by, relating to, or requiring only a small amount of moisture Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : By the late 1800s, botanists were using the terms xerophyte and xerophytic for plants that were well adapted for survival in dry environments. But some felt the
The word for today is… consecutive (adjective) - : following one after the other in order : successive Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : Consecutive has a good deal in common with the complementary word concurrent. Besides the fact that both begin with the prefix con- (meaning “with, together”), each word deals with the time-
The word for today is… fissiparous (adjective) - : tending to break or split up into parts : divisive Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : When it first entered English in the 19th century, fissiparous was concerned with reproduction. In biology, a fissiparous organism is one that produces new individuals by fission; that is, by
The word for today is… tacit (adjective) - 1: expressed or carried on without words or speech 2: implied or indicated (as by an act or by silence) but not actually expressed Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : In the first chapter of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, the narrator Mr. Lockwood recounts
The word for today is… bathetic (adjective) - : characterized by bathos Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : When English speakers turned apathy into apathetic in the late 17th century, using the suffix -etic to turn the noun into the adjective, they were inspired by pathetic, the adjectival form of pathos, from Greek pathētikos.
The word for today is… deepfake (noun) - : a digital image, video, voice, etc. that has been convincingly generated or altered to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : The old maxim "things aren’t always as they seem&
The word for today is… puerile (adjective) - 1: juvenile 2: childish, silly Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : Puerile may call to mind qualities of youth and immaturity, but the term itself is no spring chicken. On the contrary, it's been around for more than three centuries, and its predecessors
The word for today is… avarice (noun) - : excessive or insatiable desire for wealth or profit : greediness, cupidity Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : A more formal synonym for greed, avarice has a long if uncomplicated history in English. Chaucer in his 14th-century The Parson's Tale compared avarice with covetise,
The word for today is… whelm (verb) - 1: to turn (something, such as a dish or vessel) upside down usually to cover something : cover or engulf completely with usually disastrous effect 2: to overcome in thought or feeling : overwhelm Source : Merriam-Webster Etymology : In the film comedy Ten Things I
