Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 2, 2026 is:





prescience • \PRESH-ee-unss\ • noun

Prescience is a formal word used to refer to the ability to see or anticipate what will or might happen in the future.

// He predicted the public's response to the proposed legislation with remarkable prescience.

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Examples:

"... novelists have always faced technological and social upheaval. They have mostly addressed it in one of two ways. The first is to imagine an altered future with the prescience of science fiction; Mary Shelley's warning that humans are not always in control of their creations is, if anything, even more resonant today than when Frankenstein was first published in 1818." — Jessi Jezewska Stevens, The Dial, 2 Dec. 2025





Did you know?

If you know the origin of science you already know half the story of prescience. Science comes from the Latin verb sciō, scīre, "to know," also source of such words as conscience, conscious, and omniscience. Prescience has as its ancestor a word that attached prae-, a predecessor of pre-, to this root to make praescire, meaning "to know beforehand."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 1, 2026 is:





gargantuan • \gahr-GAN-chuh-wun\ • adjective

Gargantuan describes something that is very large in size or amount; something gargantuan is, in other words, gigantic.

// Bigfoot is said to be a creature of gargantuan proportions.

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Examples:

“By the late 1870s, he was asked to take part in the gargantuan task of evaluating and cataloguing the results of the five-year Challenger expedition—an ambitious British global research voyage, the first ever dedicated purely to science. [Ernst] Haeckel’s contribution to the final 50-volume Report of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger took a decade to complete and spanned three volumes, 2,750 pages, and 130 plates.” — Michael Benson, Nanocosmos: Journeys in Electron Space, 2025





Did you know?

Gargantua is the name of a giant king in François Rabelais's 16th-century satiric novel Gargantua, the second part of a five-volume series about the giant and his son Pantagruel. All of the details of Gargantua's life befit a giant. He rides a colossal mare whose tail switches so violently that it fells the entire forest of Orleans. He has an enormous appetite, such that in one incident he inadvertently swallows five pilgrims while eating a salad. The scale of everything connected with Gargantua led to the adjective gargantuan, which since William Shakespeare's time has been used for anything of tremendous size or volume.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 31, 2026 is:





short shrift • \SHORT-SHRIFT\ • noun

Short shrift means “little or no attention or thought” or “quick work.” In religious use it refers to barely adequate time for confession before execution.

// Certain neighborhoods have received short shrift from the city government.

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Examples:

“[Charlie] Caplinger echoed the concerns of many speakers at the meeting, with charter captains saying the recreational fishing industry’s economic contributions were being given short shrift.” — Mike Smith, NOLA.com (New Orleans, Louisiana), 6 Nov. 2025





Did you know?

We’ve got a confession to make, but we’ll keep it brief: while it’s technically possible to make “long shrift” of something, you’re unlikely to find long shrift in our dictionary anytime soon. Short shrift, on the other hand, has been keeping it real—real terse, that is—for centuries. The earliest known use of the phrase comes from Shakespeare’s play Richard III, in which Lord Hastings, who has been condemned by King Richard to be beheaded, is told by Sir Richard Ratcliffe to “Make a short shrift” as the king “longs to see your head.” Although now archaic, the noun shrift was understood in Shakespeare’s time to refer to the confession or absolution of sins, so “make a short shrift” meant, quite literally, “keep your confession short.” However, since at least the 19th century the phrase has been used figuratively to refer to a small or inadequate amount of time or attention given to something.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 30, 2026 is:





preeminent • \pree-EM-uh-nunt\ • adjective

Preeminent is a formal word used to describe someone or something more important, skillful, or successful than their counterparts or peers. It is used synonymously with outstanding and supreme.

// She's the preeminent chef in a city renowned for its cuisine.

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Examples:

"In this warmly engaging intellectual biography, [author Paul R.] Viotti traces the life and ideas of Kenneth Waltz, a preeminent figure in post–World War II international relations scholarship." — G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, 16 Dec. 2025





Did you know?

What is noteworthy about the following sentence? "Mount Kilimanjaro is a prominent eminence on the Tanzanian landscape." You very likely recognized two words that are closely related to preeminent: prominent and eminence. All three words are rooted in the Latin verb stem -minēre, which is taken to mean "to stand out" though there is no record of its use without a prefix. Mount also deserves an honorable mention: it comes from the Latin mont- or mons, meaning "mountain," which is understood to share a common ancestor with -minēre. Mount leads us in turn to paramount, a word closely related in meaning to preeminent.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 29, 2026 is:





reciprocate • \rih-SIP-ruh-kayt\ • verb

To reciprocate is to do something for or to someone who has done something similar for or to you. Reciprocate can also mean “to have (a feeling) for someone who has the same feeling for you.”

// It was kind of my friend to give me a ride to the airport, and on the flight I was thinking of how to reciprocate the favor.

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Examples:

“She entered the post office and greeted Tommaso, who reciprocated with a smile, then Carmine, who stroked his beard and shot her the usual skeptical glance.” — Francesca Giannone, The Letter Carrier (translated by Elettra Pauletto), 2025





Did you know?

“Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” “do unto others as you would have them do to you,” “share and share alike”: such is the essence of the verb reciprocate, which implies a mutual or equivalent exchange or a paying back of what one has received. Reciprocate traces back to the Latin verb reciprocare (“to move back and forth”), which in turn comes from the adjective reciprocus, meaning “returning the same way” or “alternating.” Indeed, one of the meanings of reciprocate is “to move forward and backward alternately,” as in “a reciprocating saw.” Most often, however, reciprocate is used for the action of returning something in kind or degree, whether that be a gift, favor, or feeling.