Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 6, 2025 is:
antic • \AN-tik\ • noun
Antic refers to an attention-drawing, often wildly playful or funny act or action. It is usually used in its plural form, and is often used disapprovingly.
// It wasn't clear which students were ultimately responsible for the antics that unfolded in the cafeteria that day.
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Examples:
“A couple of adult gorillas, including one majestic silverback, lay indolently on the ground—seemingly reveling in the early morning sunshine, while a pair of young gorillas tumbled down from a mound and played together on the muddy earth. It was remarkable to see how similar they are to humans. They live in family groups and their movements, antics and expressions are so like ours. In fact, data shows that humans and gorillas differ in only 1.75 per cent of their DNA, far less than previously assumed. (Chimpanzees—our closest relatives—differ only 1.37 per cent from our genomes.)” — Zeineb Badawi, An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence, 2025
Did you know?
When referring to one of the grotesques—the fanciful, often fantastical mural paintings found in the ruins of ancient Roman buildings—the Italian descendants of the ancient Romans used the word antico, meaning “ancient thing.” In 16th-century English, antico (itself a descendant of the Latin word for “ancient,” antiquus) became antic, and got applied as both a noun and an adjective in contexts related to decorative art—sculptures, painting, architecture, etc.—inspired by the original grotesques. Antic shifted in meaning over time, eventually gaining the senses we use more often today: antic as an adjective describes the absurd or whimsical, and antic as a usually plural noun refers to attention-grabbing, playful or funny acts and actions.
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cantankerous
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 5, 2025 is:
cantankerous • \kan-TANK-uh-rus\ • adjective
A cantankerous person is often angry and annoyed, and a cantankerous animal or thing is difficult or irritating to deal with.
// Although the former postman was regarded by some townspeople as a scowling, cantankerous old coot, he was beloved by neighborhood children, to whom he would regularly hand out butterscotch candies from his front stoop with a twinkle in his eye.
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Examples:
“The film ‘Hard Truths,’ which opens in New York on Friday and nationwide in January, centers on [Marianne] Jean-Baptiste’s Pansy, a cantankerous middle-aged woman who spits venom at unsuspecting shop assistants, bald babies, her 20-something son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) and her dentist, among others.” — Simran Hans, The New York Times, 9 Dec. 2024
Did you know?
A person described as cantankerous may find it more difficult than most to turn that frown upside down, while a cantankerous mule/jalopy/etc. is difficult to deal with—it may not turn in your desired direction. It’s been speculated that cantankerous is a product of the obsolete word contack, meaning “contention,” under the influence of a pair of “difficult” words still in use: rancorous and cankerous. Rancorous brings the anger and “bitter deep-seated ill will” (as rancor can be understood to mean), and cankerous brings the perhaps understandable foul mood: a cankerous person suffers from painful sores—that is, cankers.
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Yankee
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 4, 2025 is:
Yankee • \YANG-kee\ • noun
Yankee can refer broadly to anyone born or living in the U.S., more narrowly to only those in the northern U.S., or even more narrowly to only those in the states of New England. The broadest use is especially common outside the U.S.
// It took the children some time to adjust to being the only Southerners in a classroom full of Yankees.
// After years of international travel, he'd grown accustomed to living as a Yankee abroad.
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Examples:
"Anthony Pettaway's coworkers at Norfab Ducting have known for the past six years he was good at getting their deliveries to the right department. They also knew from his accent that the receivables department employee was a relocated Yankee." — Jill Doss-Raines, The Dispatch (Lexington, NC), 10 June 2025
Did you know?
We don't know the origin of Yankee but we do know that it began as an insult. British General James Wolfe used the term in a 1758 letter to express his low opinion of the New England troops assigned to him, and from around the same time period there is a report of British troops using Yankee as a term of abuse for the citizens of Boston. In 1775, however, after the battles of Lexington and Concord showed that colonials could stand up to British regulars, Yankee was proudly adopted by colonials as a self-descriptor in defiance of the pejorative use. Both derisive and respectable uses have existed ever since.
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desultory
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 3, 2025 is:
desultory • \DEH-sul-tor-ee\ • adjective
Desultory is a formal word used to describe something that lacks a plan or purpose, or that occurs without regularity. It can also describe something unconnected to a main subject, or something that is disappointing in progress, performance, or quality.
// After graduation, I moved from job to job in a more or less desultory manner before finding work I liked.
// The team failed to cohere over the course of the season, stumbling to a desultory fifth place finish.
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Examples:
“One other guy was in the waiting room when I walked in. As we sat there past the scheduled time of our appointments, we struck up a desultory conversation. Like me, he’d been in the hiring process for years, had driven down from Albuquerque the night before, and seemed nervous. He asked if I’d done any research on the polygraph. I said no, and asked him the same question. He said no. We were getting our first lies out of the way.” — Justin St. Germain, “The Memoirist and the Lie Detector,” New England Review, 2024
Did you know?
The Latin adjective desultorius was used by the ancient Romans to describe a circus performer (called a desultor) whose trick was to leap from horse to horse without stopping. English speakers took the idea of the desultorius performer and coined the word desultory to describe that which figuratively “jumps” from one thing to another, without regularity, and showing no sign of a plan or purpose. (Both desultor and desultorius, by the way, come from the Latin verb salire, meaning “to leap.”) A desultory conversation leaps from one topic to another, and a desultory comment is one that jumps away from the topic at hand. Meanwhile a desultory performance is one resulting from an implied lack of steady, focused effort.
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galumph
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 2, 2025 is:
galumph • \guh-LUMF\ • verb
To galumph is to move in a loud and clumsy way.
// I could hear them galumphing around in the attic in search of old family photo albums.
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Examples:
“Dragons! Dragons roaring! Dragons squawking! Dragons sizing each other up! Dragons galumphing over the sand so awkwardly it reminds you that dragons are creatures of the air, not the earth.” — Glen Weldon, NPR, 28 July 2024
Did you know?
Bump, thump, thud. There’s no doubt about it—when someone or something galumphs onto the scene, ears take notice. Galumph first lumbered onto the English scene in 1872 when Lewis Carroll used the word to describe the actions of the vanquisher of the Jabberwock in Through the Looking Glass: “He left it dead, and with its head / He went galumphing back.” Carroll likely constructed the word by splicing gallop and triumphant, as galumph did in its earliest uses convey a sense of exultant bounding. Other 19th-century writers must have liked the sound of galumph, because they began plying it in their own prose, and it has been clumping around our language ever since.
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