Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

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





comely • \KUM-lee\ • adjective

Comely is an adjective with an old-fashioned and literary feel that describes someone or something that has a pleasing appearance, or that is pretty or attractive.

// The newlyweds make quite a comely couple.

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Examples:

"One of the first things I noticed when I moved to Berlin 10 years ago was something odd about the pigeons here: Some of them were pretty, far comelier than Manhattan pigeons ..." — Ben Crair, The New York Times, 29 June 2026





Did you know?

Comely—especially when compared to its more common synonyms, including lovely, handsome, and beautiful—has an old-fashioned flair. These days it is used especially by writers of historical fantasy to modify words referring to women, such as maiden and damsel, that also suggest real or imagined days of castles and courts. But comely need not be restricted to such uses, and indeed, it historically was not. Its oldest meaning in English, from the 14th century and still used today, describes things that conform, pleasurably, to notions of good appearance, suitability, or proportion, as when Willa Cather wrote that "they observed that all was neat and comely …" Comely is not etymologically related to the familiar verb come that also forms part of the word come-hither, as in "come-hither glances." It instead traces back to the Old English word cȳmlic, meaning "glorious," which in turn comes from cȳme, meaning "lively" or "fine."

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





sultry • \SULL-tree\ • adjective

Sultry means “very hot and humid” when it describes such things as seasons, days, and weather. When it describes things humans do and possess—voices, poses, looks, and the like—it means “exciting or capable of exciting strong sexual desire.”

// The restaurant's rooftop deck is the place to be on sultry summer nights.

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Examples:

“It’s a sultry morning in the Maldives and the mechanic is sweating as he tinkers with the sparkling La Marzocco espresso machine. All the while, hopeful guests watch, desperate for a morning hit.” — Belinda Jackson, The Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, 15 Nov. 2025





Did you know?

Sultry days and glances both burn hot—one literally, and the other figuratively. Sultry is a late 16th century alteration of the obsolete word sulter, itself an alteration of swelter, which since the 14th century has meant “to suffer, sweat, or be faint from heat” and “to become exceedingly hot.” Sweltering on a sultry day may also bring the word muggy to mind; that word comes from an English dialectical word, mug, meaning “drizzle.” Unlike muggy and swelter, sultry, as we said, applies to both literal and figurative heat, as when a singer’s sultry voice brings a figuratively hot vibe.

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





inveigle • \in-VAY-gul\ • verb

To inveigle someone is to persuade them in a clever or deceptive way to do something. Inveigle can also mean “to get something in a clever or deceptive way.”

// According to rumors, the company inveigled employees into signing the agreement.

// Their attempts to inveigle the information from her were, eventually, fruitful.

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Examples:

“... his wayward cousin Freddie constantly inveigles him into more serious mischief.” — Julian Lucas, The New Yorker, 22 June 2026





Did you know?

It’s true that you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you might find you can inveigle someone else into getting it for you. Inveigle, a word that dates from the 16th century, is used in situations where someone uses clever talk, trickery, or flattery either to persuade somebody to do something or to obtain something. If you have the morning munchies, for example, but get no satisfaction from cold cereal, you might inveigle a bagel (by complimenting a barista, say) or inveigle a barista into giving you a bagel. Failed to plan thoroughly for your camping trip? It’s not inveigling to demand “gimme shelter” or “you gotta move” to someone with a tent you'd like to steal like a thief in the night: inveigling involves subtle acts of persuasion and sometimes outright trickery. The distinction makes sense given that inveigle comes from the Anglo-French verb enveegler, meaning “to hoodwink” (its ultimate source is the Medieval Latin ab oculis, literally, “lacking eyes”). Isn’t etymology a gas, gas, gas?

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 28, 2026 is:





kludge • \KLOOJ\ • noun

A kludge is a haphazard or makeshift solution to a problem and especially to a computer or programming problem.

// Andy knocked out a hasty kludge to circumvent the glitch until a more robust solution could be developed.

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Examples:

“The advent of television in the 1940s allowed the movie industry to reconsider frame rates. Unfortunately, primitive video technology limited dramatic improvements. ... While the frame rate exceeded cinema, the resolution (how much information each frame actually contained) paled in comparison to 35-mm film. Even worse, the kludge enabling color broadcasting further degraded video quality.” — Rich Warren, The News-Gazette (Champaign, Illinois), 13 Apr. 2025





Did you know?

As long as the origins of kludge (also spelled kluge) are uncertain, any attempt to pin them down will itself be a bit of a kludge—that is, a makeshift solution. The writer Jackson W. Granholm, once thought to have coined the word, offered his own when he wrote in his 1962 article “How to design a kludge” that it came from the German word klug, meaning “smart” or “witty.” This connection is unlikely on both phonetic and semantic grounds, however, and in any event the word already existed. A decade earlier, in an article recounting military folklore acquired from ex-soldiers, Agnes Nolan Underwood related a shaggy-dog story about a sailor named Murgatroyd whose civilian occupation is “kluge maker.” The meaning of kluge is withheld till the end of the tale, when the object made by Murgatroyd turns out to be “the damnedest looking little thing you ever saw—wires and springs sticking out in every direction.” Murgatroyd then accidentally drops the object: “the kluge slipped out and went overboard, down into the ocean, and went ‘kkluuge’.” This suggests a possible onomatopoeic origin for kludge/kluge (we note that the kluge spelling better reflects its pronunciation; the word rhymes with huge, not fudge), but again, nothing in this life is certain but death and taxes, and these days also computer malfunctions.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 27, 2026 is:





parochial • \puh-ROH-kee-ul\ • adjective

Parochial is a formal word that is usually used in a disapproving way to describe something that is limited in range or scope, as to a narrow region or area.

// For some, college can be an expansive experience that lifts them out of a parochial mindset.

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Examples:

“The twenty-first century American university is one of the great achievements of modern civilization and the destruction of the relationship between higher education, the federal government, and the business community would set America back to a parochial era that we left a long time ago.” — Peter Balakian, Literary Hub, 9 July 2025





Did you know?

While it’s far from a given that small towns foster narrow-mindedness, the limited range of opportunities and experiences in such places when compared to those of bigger burgs is at the heart of the figurative sense of parochial. In Late Latin, parochia was the designation for a group of Christians in a given area under the leadership of one pastor—what came to be known in English as a parish in the 14th century. Both parish and its related adjective parochial were borrowed at that time directly from Anglo-French terms that came from parochia. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that parochial expanded beyond the borders of its literal sense to describe attitudes, beliefs, mentalities, outlooks, etc., considered limited or narrow, confined or restricted, as if within a single parish.