A.Word.A.Day
Finds
- Zazzy Flashy, colorful, or stylish
- Spizzerinctum Energy, courage, and determination
- Zillionaire A person with incalculably enormous wealth
- Irrupt To burst or break in
- Exute To strip or deprive of something
- Wheal A small raised swelling on the skin
- Calender A machine that presses sheets between rollers
- Venust Beautiful, graceful, elegant
- Voracity Veracity's one-letter twin asks whether there's more, not whether it's true
- Calque A word built by translating another language's parts
- Ideocracy Rule by ideas, one letter away from rule by idiots
- Veracity Truthfulness or accuracy, and something true
- Venous Why veins look blue when venous blood is dark red
- Casque A helmet you grow yourself, on record since before 1586
- Androgynous Having both — or neither — on record since 1628
- Idiocracy Government by idiots — a word that predates the film by 39 years
- obtuse The barracuda named for its blunt gill cover
- kidology How Holyfield's trainer lied about the clock
- timorous Russia's railway chief on why the fast trains stayed away from Finland
- misgiving On exam day in Korea, air-traffic control holds every takeoff for the listening section
- soporiferous A sermon so sleep-inducing that the preacher had to shriek
- decedent One Latin root away from decadent, and both words met in the same will
- mordent The word for a musical bite, which cannot stop biting its own spelling
- Rosery A garden given over to roses — and the reason prayer beads are named after them
- Villein The villein worked a plot; the villain plotted
- Evert To turn inside out — as sea stars do with their stomachs
- Breviloquent A twelve-letter, four-syllable word for using few words
- Macilent One adjective for a thin man and a thin argument, on the books since before 1425
- Nidorous An adjective for burnt-meat stench that's been on the books since 1626
- Rorid An adjective for dewy that's been waiting since 1425
- cowhearted Coward is all tail and no cow
- moth-wing Fragile or fleeting — and a noun for the thing itself
- stickybeak Nose becomes beak, and the word gets better
- dogleg Named for the angle in a dog's hind leg
- Chumocracy Rule by the people you already know
- Obganiate To annoy someone by saying the same thing again. And again.
- Ophidiophobia An abnormal fear of snakes, and two puns about it
- Solivagant A word for wandering alone, in writing since 1621
- gangway A word that says "way" twice
- concomitance A word that arrives accompanied by its own companion
- hapchance Luck luck — English decided one word for good fortune wasn't enough
- circumambient A word that goes around, and then goes around again
- Pismire The word for an ant, from urine and mire
- Mordant The word for a cutting remark is also the chemical that bites into the plate
- Corbel The bracket that lets a wall hold something it isn't under
- Skirr The searching and the sound the searching makes
- Rapture To seize, and to be seized
- Assart One word for the field and for the clearing of it
- dowfart The rudest-looking word that isn't
- bumbaze To bewilder or stupefy
- Crotchet The etymological twin of crochet, and no relation to the word you're hearing
- Disannul A prefix that agrees with itself instead of reversing
- Withsay The 'with' in it means against
- Misdoubt A prefix that reinforces instead of reversing
- Marcel Duchamp on contradicting yourself Taste is a rut, and the way out is to disagree with yourself
- Antipelargy A word for the care children return to their parents
- Amelia Earhart on the cake bakers A 1932 award speech that turned a backhanded compliment into a rebuttal
- Bellwether The sheep that named the trend
- Expiscate To fish out — the verb for finding something by patient investigation
- Ettercap The Old English word for spider, still the best insult for a gossip
- Auspicate To begin an undertaking is, etymologically, to birdwatch first
- Gamy Six unrelated senses, one word — and no relation to '-gamy'
- Noodle One spelling, three unrelated word histories
- Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time rich and cash poor From his 2008 novel Little Brother, not a stray aphorism
- The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man Confirmed: from her 1965 novel The Red and the Green
- Wole Soyinka on silence A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today, on his birthday
- Marcel Proust on war War is declared again every morning — and continuing it is its own guilt
- June Jordan on being unmistakably alive A standard for a life: live loud enough that your absence registers
- Jean de la Fontaine on discretion One trait, two names — depending on who has it
- Alfred Korzybski on believing vs. doubting Both save us from actually thinking
- Saul Bellow on Memory On memory as a defense against insignificance.
- Henry Beston on Animals as Other Nations On animals as other nations, not underlings.
- Salvador Dalí on False and True Memories On why false memories shine brightest.
- Arthur Conan Doyle on Making the World Better On leaving the world a little better for your presence.
- Lorraine Hansberry on Exceptionalism and Loneliness On the loneliness that comes with being exceptional.
- Thomas Hardy on Galileo and Verse On how poetic form can disarm a dangerous truth.
- Salman Rushdie on Religion and Criticism On why ideas, including religions, deserve criticism.
- JFK: "We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts" A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today — JFK on the prerequisite of democracy: that citizens can be trusted to evaluate ideas the state finds inconvenient.
- Balzac: "Vocations we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed on the whole of our existence" A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today (May 20) — Honoré de Balzac on the lasting cost of unchosen careers, color-bleeding through the rest of a life.
- Smithfield match A 1703 phrase for marriage of convenience, from a London livestock market
- Daphne du Maurier: "How simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten" A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today (May 13, 2026) — Daphne du Maurier on the simplicity of a self-image-free life.
- Rake's progress A 1733 Hogarth series became a phrase for decline by folly
- Thomas Pynchon — "The wrong questions" Gravity's Rainbow on misdirection as power
- Freud on Spending Affection Today's A.Word.A.Day Thought for Today, on Freud's birthday
- Joseph Heller — "The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed" *Catch-22*'s definition of an enemy, served as today's word