Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 6, 2025 is: festoon • \fess-TOON\  • verb Festoon usually means "to cover or decorate (something) with many small objects, pieces of paper, etc.," or "to appear here and there on the surface of." It can also mean "to hang decorative chains or strips on." // Tiny wildflowers festooned the meadow. // We festooned the halls with ribbons and garland. See the entry > [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/festoon#h2] Examples: "The road was lined with ancient trees festooned with Spanish moss." — Tayari Jones, Travel + Leisure, 14 Apr. 2025 Did you know? The noun festoon [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/festoon] first appeared in the 1600s when it was used, as it still is today, to refer to decorative chains or strips hung between two points. (It can also refer to a carved, molded, or painted ornament representing such a chain.) After a century's worth of festoon-adorning, the verb festoon made an entrance, and people began to festoon with their festoons—that is, they draped and adorned with them. The verb form of festoon has since acquired additional, more general senses related not only to decorating, but to appearing on the surface of something, as in "a sweater festooned with unicorns." Perhaps unsurprisingly, this celebratory-sounding and party-associated word traces back (by way of French and Italian) to Latin festa, the plural of festum, meaning "festival."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 5, 2025 is: sea change • \SEE-CHAYNJ\  • noun Sea change refers to a big and sudden change or transformation. // The early 2000s witnessed a sea change in public opinion about smoking in public places. See the entry > [https://bit.ly/3RlxQzM] Examples: “Over the course of my grandmother’s lifetime, gender expectations for women underwent a sea change. My grandmother ended up pursuing an education and becoming a doctor, leading an independent life that made her mother proud.” — Wendy Chen, LitHub.com, 20 May 2024 Did you know? In The Tempest, William Shakespeare’s final play, sea change refers to a change brought about by the sea: the sprite Ariel, who aims to make Ferdinand believe that his father the king has perished in a shipwreck, sings within earshot of the prince, “Full fathom five thy father lies...; / Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / into something rich and strange.” This is the original, now-archaic meaning of sea change. Today the term is used for a distinctive change or transformation. Long after sea change gained this figurative meaning, however, writers continued to allude to Shakespeare’s literal one; Charles Dickens, Henry David Thoreau, and P.G. Wodehouse all used the term as an object of the verb suffer, but now a sea change is just as likely to be undergone or experienced.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 4, 2025 is: bogus • \BOH-gus\  • adjective Bogus is an informal word used to describe something that is not real or genuine, making it a synonym of such words as fake [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fake], false [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/false], and counterfeit [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/counterfeit]. // We were disappointed to find out that the purses we bought were bogus. // The company was investigated over several bogus claims that their products could guarantee better health for their customers. See the entry > [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bogus] Examples: “A former West Covina resident admitted to selling at least $250,000 in bogus sports and entertainment memorabilia, including forged photos and signatures of the ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ stars.” — Noah Goldberg, The Los Angeles Times, 9 Apr. 2025 Did you know? In her 1840 novel A New Home—Who’ll Follow?, author Carolina Kirkland wrote about a scandal affecting the fictitious frontier town of Tinkerville, whose bank vaults were discovered to contain “a heavy charge of broken glass and tenpenny nails, covered above and below with half-dollars, principally ‘bogus.’ Alas! for Tinkerville, and alas, for poor Michigan!” Alas indeed. Bogus (an apparent U.S. coinage) was first used in the argot [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/argot] of wildcat banks [https://www.britannica.com/money/wildcat-bank] (like the one in Tinkerville) as a noun referring to counterfeit money. It later branched out into adjective use meaning “counterfeit or forged.” Although the noun is now obsolete, the adjective is still used today with the same meaning, and is applied not only to phony currency but to anything that is less than genuine, making it part of a treasury of similar words ranging from the very old (sham [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sham]) to the fairly new (fugazi [https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/fugazi]).

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 3, 2025 is: tutelage • \TOO-tuh-lij\  • noun Tutelage is a formal word that refers to the instruction or guidance especially of an individual student by a teacher. Tutelage may also refer to an act or process of serving as guardian or protector. // Under the tutelage of his high school swim coach, Luis has greatly improved his times at meets. // The company is relying on the expert tutelage of its new director to increase profits. See the entry > [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tutelage] Examples: "[Hercules] Mulligan helped with [Alexander] Hamilton's education, including placing him under the tutelage of William Livingston [https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Livingston] of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), who was a leading local American revolutionary. ... Mulligan is said to have deeply influenced Hamilton towards engagement in revolutionary activity." — Brian Maye, The Irish Times, 2 Mar. 2025 Did you know? Tutelage comes from the Latin verb tueri, meaning "to look at" or "to guard." When it first appeared in English at the turn of the 17th century, this word was used mainly in the protective sense of tueri; writers would describe serfs and peasants of earlier eras as being "under the tutelage of their lord." Over time, however, the word's meaning shifted away from guardianship and toward instruction. This pattern of meaning can also be seen in the related nouns tutor [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tutor], which shifted from "a guardian" to "a private teacher," and tuition [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tuition], which now typically refers to the cost of instruction but which originally referred to the protection, care, or custody by a parent or guardian over a child or ward.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 2, 2025 is: Herculean • \her-kyuh-LEE-un\  • adjective Something described as Herculean (often uncapitalized as herculean) is characterized by extraordinary power, extent, intensity, or difficulty. // Although starting a garden sounded fun in theory, the constant weeding and pest control turned it into a herculean task. See the entry > [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Herculean] Examples: “Strong doesn’t even properly describe [Ashton] Jeanty’s Herculean, how-is-he-doing-that kind of strength. Before his sophomore year of college, he squatted 575 pounds. [Coach James] Montgomery thought that Jeanty had maxed out. He was wrong. Now Jeanty easily squats 605 pounds ‘like a hot knife through butter,’ Montgomery says.” — Mirin Fader, The Ringer, 5 Dec. 2024 Did you know? The hero Hercules [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Heracles], son of the god Zeus [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zeus] by a human mother, was famous for his superhuman strength. To pacify the wrath of the god Apollo [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Apollo-Greek-mythology], he was forced to perform twelve enormously difficult tasks, or “labors.” These ranged from descending into the underworld to bring back the terrifying dog that guarded its entrance to destroying the many-headed monster called the Hydra [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hydra-Greek-mythology]. The feats he accomplished explain how Herculean in the 16th century came to be used for any job or task that’s extremely difficult or calls for enormous strength.