Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 10, 2023 is: advocate • \AD-vuh-kayt\  • verb Advocate means "to support or argue for (a cause, policy, etc.); to plead in favor of." // The plan is advocated by several prominent city officials. // They formed a group advocating for improvements in the school system. See the entry > Examples: "Even when she's [Olympic track star Allyson Felix] done running, she's not done winning. Using her reign as a top-tier athlete, she's advocated for Black maternal health and women in sports, starting in 2019 when she stood up to former sponsor Nike for proposing a 70% cut to her contractual pay when she became pregnant." — Janelle Harris Dixon, TheGrio.com, 10 Nov. 2022 Did you know? Benjamin Franklin may have been a great innovator in science and politics, but on the subject of advocate, he was against change. In 1789, he wrote a letter to his compatriot Noah Webster complaining about a "new word": the verb advocate. Like others of his day, Franklin knew advocate primarily as a noun meaning "one who pleads the cause of another," and he urged Webster to condemn the verb's use. In truth, the verb wasn't as new as Franklin assumed (it dates back to at least the early 16th century), though it was apparently surging in popularity in his day. Webster evidently did not heed Franklin's plea: his famous 1828 dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language, entered both the noun and the verb senses of advocate.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 9, 2023 is: saturnine • \SAT-er-nyne\  • adjective Saturnine is a literary word that typically describes people who are glum and grumpy, or things that suggest or express gloom. It can also mean “slow to act or change.” // A walk in the sunshine can improve your mood significantly, raising the spirits of even the most saturnine among us. See the entry > Examples: “The canvases that surround you at the Rothko Chapel here can at first seem merely dark. Entering the space after nightfall on Saturday, the interior dimly lit, I struggled to see much of anything in them at all. But even in that calm gloom, my eyes slowly acclimated to the 14 grandly saturnine paintings, made by Mark Rothko in the late 1960s. Shadowy rectangles began to emerge, floating over shadow.” — Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times, 21 Feb. 2022 Did you know? Saturnine is far—even astronomically far—from the cheeriest of words. It has a long history of describing the glum and grouchy among us, and comes ultimately from Sāturnus, name of the Roman god of agriculture, who was often depicted as a bent old man with a stern, sluggish, and sullen nature. Saturn, the ringed gas giant that is one of five planets visible to the naked eye, is of course the namesake of Sāturnus, and Saturn does indeed seem to dawdle; it requires over 29 of our Earth years to orbit the sun. The ancient Romans (like some astrologists today) believed those who are born when Saturn is rising in the sky may tend toward being a Gloomy Gus or Debbie Downer. We don’t know A. A. Milne’s take on the influence of Saturn, but his gloomy, cynical gray donkey Eeyore is famously saturnine, a fact Eeyore himself would surely stoically accept as true if it were pointed out to him.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 8, 2023 is: etiquette • \ET-ih-kut\  • noun Etiquette refers to the rules of proper and polite behavior that are expected in social or official life. // Her failure to respond to the invitation was a serious breach of etiquette. See the entry > Examples: “Keeping manners top of mind makes a difference when facing a dissatisfaction while dining out. Jacqueline Whitmore, an etiquette expert … tells USA Today that ‘you can get more with honey than you can with vinegar, that’s the bottom line. When you’re rude, you’re calling attention to yourself in many cases and also you’re making other people feel terrible and you’re sometimes making yourself look bad,’ she said. Often, if you are kind and direct, a situation can be resolved at a restaurant. It’s important to understand that etiquette is situational. Every staff and management system has different procedures but their common goal is to keep diners happy. But ‘that doesn't give a diner permission to be rude to the waitstaff,’ Whitmore said.” — Morgan Hines, USA Today, 18 Oct. 2022 Did you know? If you’re looking for a polite topic of conversation to raise at your next gathering of word lovers, we’ve got just the ticket. The French word étiquette means “ticket”; its direct French ancestor also referred to a label attached to something for description or identification. Spaniards of the 16th-century adopted the French word (altering it to etiqueta), and used it to refer to the written protocols describing the behavior demanded of those who appeared at court. Eventually, etiqueta came to be applied to the court ceremonies themselves as well as to the documents which outlined their requirements. Word of this linguistic development got back to the French, who then expanded their word’s meaning to include “proper court behavior” along with its “label” sense. By the middle of the 18th century English speakers had taken on etiquette as their own, applying it to the rules that indicate the proper and polite way to behave, whether in the presence of royalty or not.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 7, 2023 is: blandishment • \BLAN-dish-munt\  • noun A blandishment is something said or done in order to coax or persuade an individual or group to do something. The word is usually used in its plural form, blandishments. // It's important that the mayor not be swayed by bribes and blandishments; decisions must be made for the overall good of the city. // No treat, soft words, or other blandishment could get the mule to move when it decided it would rather stay put. See the entry > Examples: “Justices across the ideological spectrum have been accused of failing to make pertinent financial disclosures, accepting dubious blandishments, rejecting well-founded calls for recusal, engaging in questionable political and financial activity, and much else that would raise the eyebrows of any reasonable observer.” — Bloomberg Opinion, 5 May 2023 Did you know? When Star Wars audiences first meet former smuggler Lando Calrissian—played iconically by Billy Dee Williams—in The Empire Strikes Back, he is full of blandishments, offering flattery (telling Leia “You truly belong here with us among the clouds”) and gifts to our heroes in the form of food and drink (“Will you join me for a little refreshment?”) in order to entice them into what we soon discover is a trap. Notably, before the whole sordid deal goes down (and before Lando’s eventual redemption), Han Solo calls him “an old smoothie.” Lando’s verbal smoothness can be linked to blandishment too: the word was formed from the verb blandish, meaning “to coax with flattery.” Blandish ultimately comes from the Latin adjective blandus, meaning “mild” or “flattering,” source too of our adjective bland, which typically describes things boring and flavorless but which can also mean “smooth and soothing in manner or quality”—a meaning that also applies to everyone’s favorite Cloud City administrator.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 6, 2023 is: trenchant • \TREN-chunt\  • adjective Trenchant is a formal word that is usually used to describe communication that is notably strong, clear, and perceptive, or in other words, “sharp.” // The author’s trenchant wit was very evident in the critique she wrote of the much-acclaimed film. // Trenchant insights made eloquently by the speaker clearly affected many of those in the audience. See the entry > Examples: “Written and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (a longtime collaborator of Halloween director John Carpenter), the film’s scares touch on ancient witchcraft and computer chips made out of Stonehenge fragments. The movie also takes some trenchant digs at TV advertising and emphasizes an odd and foreboding atmosphere over cheap shocks.” — David Sims, The Atlantic, 8 Sep. 2021 Did you know? There’s much to know about the word trenchant, but we’ll cut to the chase. The word trenchant comes from the Anglo-French verb trencher, meaning “to cut.” Hence, a trenchant sword is one with a keen edge. Nowadays, trenchant mostly describes things that don’t cut deep literally, but that are still felt: a trenchant remark is one that cuts close to the bone, and a trenchant observation is one that cuts to the heart of the matter. In addition to meaning “caustic” and “sharply perceptive,” trenchant also carries a sense meaning “very strong, clear, and effective” that may be used, for instance, to describe a persuasive essay written with intellectual rigor. If you find yourself forgetting these “edgy” definitions, you might dig up a familiar relative of trenchant: the noun trench, which refers to a long cut or ditch in the ground.