unbeknownst: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 30 is:

unbeknownst \un-bih-NOHNST\ adjective
: happening or existing without the knowledge of someone specified

Example sentence:
Unbeknownst to Clarice, we had been planning a surprise baby shower for her for weeks.

Did you know?
"Unbeknownst" derives from "beknown," an obsolete synonym of "known." But for a word with a straightforward history, "unbeknownst" and its older and less common variant "unbeknown" have created quite a flap among usage commentators. Despite widespread use (including appearances in the writings of Charles Dickens, A.E. Housman, and E.B. White), the two words have been called everything from "obsolete" to "vulgar." Our evidence, however, shows that both can be considered standard.

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pococurante: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 29 is:

pococurante \POH-koh-kyoo-RAN-tee\ adjective
: indifferent, nonchalant

Example sentence:
At the ball, the snobbish debutante offended many would-be suitors by responding to their greetings in a pococurante manner.

Did you know?
The French writer Voltaire carefully named his characters in _Candide_ (1759) to create allegories. He appended the prefix "pan-," meaning "all," to "glossa," the Greek word for "tongue," to name his optimistic tutor "Pangloss," a sobriquet suggesting glibness and talkativeness. Then there is the apathetic Venetian Senator Pococurante, whose name appropriately means "caring little" in Italian. Voltaire's characters did not go unnoticed by later writers. Laurence Sterne used "Pococurante" in part six of _Tristram Shandy_, published three years after _Candide_, to mean "a careless person," and Irish poet Thomas Moore first employed the word as an adjective when he described Dublin as a poco-curante place in his memoirs of 1815.

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candidate: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 28 is:

candidate \KAN-duh-dayt\ noun
*1 : one that aspires to or is nominated or qualified for an office, membership, or award
2 : one likely or suited to undergo or be chosen for something specified
3 : a student in the process of meeting final requirements for a degree

Example sentence:
Voters will have several appealing candidates to choose from in this election.

Did you know?
When a person running for public office in ancient Rome greeted voters in the Forum, the center of judicial and public business, he wore a toga that had been whitened with chalk. As a result, the Latin word for someone seeking office came to be "candidatus," meaning literally "clothed in white." "Candidatus," in turn, comes from the adjective "candidus," meaning "white." "Candidatus" was adopted into English as "candidate" at the beginning of the 17th century.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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belie: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 27 is:

belie \bih-LYE\ verb
1 a : to give a false impression of b : to present an appearance not in agreement with
2 a : to show (something) to be false or wrong b : to run counter to : contradict
*3 : disguise

Example sentence:
Martin's easy banter and relaxed attitude belied his nervousness.

Did you know?
"What is a lie?" asked Lord Byron in Don Juan. He then answered himself: "'Tis but the truth in masquerade...." The history of "belie" illustrates a certain connection between lying and disguising. In its earliest known use, around A.D. 1000, "belie" meant "to deceive by lying." By the 1200s, it was being used to mean "to tell lies about," using a sense similar to that of the modern word "slander." Over time its meaning softened, shifting from an act of outright lying to one of mere misrepresentation, and by the early 1700s, the word was being used in the sense "to disguise or conceal." Nowadays, "belie" suggests giving an impression at variance with the facts rather than telling an intentional untruth.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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xeriscape: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 26 is:

xeriscape \ZEER-uh-skayp\ noun, often capitalized
: a landscaping method developed especially for arid and semiarid climates that utilizes water-conserving techniques (as the use of drought-tolerant plants, mulch, and efficient irrigation)

Example sentence:
Jim is not green-thumbed, so when he relocated to Colorado, he really liked the low-maintenance xeriscape of his new home.

Did you know?
"Xeros" is the Greek word for "dry" that is the base for a handful of English words related to mainly dry printing ("xerography") and dry, or xerophilous, habitats and their plants. In the early 1980s, the Greek adjective was used to name a type of landscaping practiced primarily in the arid western regions of the United States. (The Water Department of Denver, Colorado, is credited with the word's coinage.) "Xeriscape," as it is called, uses plants that require little water and techniques that efficiently use water and reduce evaporation.

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fuliginous: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 25 is:

fuliginous \fyoo-LIJ-uh-nus\ adjective
1*a : sooty b: obscure, murky
2 : having a dark or dusky color

Example sentence:
London was a fuliginous city during the Industrial Revolution.

Did you know?
"Fuliginous" is a word with a dark and dirty past -- it derives from "fuligo," the Latin word for "soot." In an early sense (now obsolete), "fuliginous" was used to describe noxious bodily vapors once thought to be produced by organic processes. The "sooty" sense, which English speakers have been using since the early 1620s, can be used to describe everything from dense fogs and malevolent clouds to overworked chimney sweeps. "Fuliginous" can also be used to refer to something dark or dusky, as in Henry James' novel _The Ambassadors_, in which the character Waymarsh is described as having "dark fuliginous eyes."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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roorback: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 24 is:

roorback \ROOR-back\ noun
: a defamatory falsehood published for political effect

Example sentence:
"The attacks on my character are nothing but roorbacks drummed up by my opponent," insisted the candidate.

Did you know?
If you think dirty politics are new, think again. In the midst of the 1844 presidential campaign between James K. Polk and Henry Clay, a letter was published in a newspaper in Ithaca, New York, claiming that a reputable witness (one Baron von Roorback) had, while traveling in Tennessee, come across 43 slaves owned by Polk and branded with his initials. The letter caused an uproar that threatened to derail Polk's campaign until it was discovered that the whole thing was a hoax supposedly perpetrated by the opposing party. Baron von Roorback didn't even exist. The incident proved a political boomerang; Polk won the election and the name "roorback" became a byword for political dirty tricks.

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lissome: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 23 is:

lissome \LISS-um\ adjective
1 a : easily flexed *b : lithe
2 : nimble

Example sentence:
Even though she hasn't danced in years, Maggie still has the lissome body of a ballerina.

Did you know?
"Lissome" (sometimes spelled "lissom") is a gently altered form of its synonym, "lithesome." While "lissome" tends to be the more popular choice these days, the two words have similar pasts. They both appeared in the second half of the 18th century, and they both trace back to the much older "lithe" ("supple" or "graceful"), which first appeared in English during the 14th century and comes from an Old English word meaning "gentle." "Lissome" can also be an adverb meaning "in a supple or nimble manner," but this use is rare.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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cineast: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 22 is:

cineast \SIN-ee-ast\ noun
: a devotee of motion pictures; also : moviemaker

Example sentence:
Ralph and Tory met -- and fell in love -- at a film festival, and within a year the two cineasts were engaged to be married.

Did you know?
"Cineast" is a French borrowing that made its American premiere in the mid-1920s. The French spliced together "cine" and "-aste" to create "cineaste," a word for a filmmaker or movie director. "Cine" in French is just another word for "cinema," and "-aste" is a suffix that appears in words like "gymnaste" and "enthousiaste." "Cineaste" underwent several changes once it was established in English. Some writers anglicized its spelling, shortening "-aste" to "-ast" (although "cineaste" and "cineaste" are also still used). Others began to use "cineast" to mean "film buff," and that's the sense that is most common today.

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estival: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 21 is:

estival \ESS-tuh-vul\ adjective
: of or relating to the summer

Example sentence:
On summer evenings, Carl would sit for hours on the porch enjoying the warmth of the estival breezes.

Did you know?
"Estival" and "festival" look so much alike that you might think they're very closely related, but that isn't the case. "Estival" traces back to "aestas," which is the Latin word for "summer" (and which also gave us "estivate," a verb for spending the summer in a torpid state -- a sort of hot-weather equivalent of hibernation). "Festival" also comes from Latin, but it has a different and unrelated root. It derives from "festivus," a term that means "festive" or "merry." "Festivus" is also the ancestor of "festive" and "festivity" as well as the much rarer "festivous" (which also means "festive") and "infestive," meaning "not merry, mirthless."

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purview: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 20 is:

purview \PER-vyoo\ noun
1 a : the body or enacting part of a statute b : the limit, purpose, or scope of a statute
*2 : the range or limit of authority, competence, responsibility, concern, or intention
3 : range of vision, understanding, or cognizance

Example sentence:
The court ruled that the student's T-shirt fell under the purview of the First Amendment.

Did you know?
You might guess that there is a connection between "purview" and "view," but the two words are not actually related. "Purview" comes from "purveu," a word often found in the legal statutes of 13th- and 14th-century England. These statutes, written in the Anglo-French, opened with the phrases "purveu est" and "purveu que," which translate literally to "it is provided" and "provided that." "Purveu" derives from "porveu," the past participle of the Old French verb "porveeir," meaning "to provide." "View" derives (via Middle English) from the past participle of another Anglo-French word, "veer," meaning "to see," and ultimately from the Latin "videre," also meaning "to see."

*Indicates the sense illustrated by the example sentence.

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shoestring: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 19 is:

shoestring \SHOO-string\ noun
1 : shoelace
*2 : a small sum of money : capital inadequate or barely adequate to the needs of a transaction

Example sentence:
For the first few years, Jillian and Georgia ran the business on a shoestring.

Did you know?
In earlier times, wandering peddlers offered townspeople a variety of items and trinkets, such as fabrics, embroidery materials, and even patent medicines. Another popular offering from these traveling salespeople was shoelaces. The fact that such vendors neither earned much money nor charged very much for their wares led to the connection of their literal shoestrings with a metaphorical application of "shoestring" to a very small amount of money. It's still not uncommon to hear of a business being operated on a shoestring (even if these days it's less likely that actual shoelaces are involved), but it's also possible to speak of "traveling on a shoestring" and even "gardening on a shoestring."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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resplendent: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 18 is:

resplendent \rih-SPLEN-dunt\ adjective
: shining brilliantly : characterized by a glowing splendor

Example sentence:
Zoo visitors excitedly snapped pictures of the peacock fanning his resplendent tail.

Did you know?
"Resplendent" has a lot in common with "splendid" ("shining, brilliant"), "splendent" ("shining, glossy"), and "splendor" ("brightness or luster"). Each of those glowing terms gets its shine from the Latin verb "splendere" ("to shine"). Etymologists believe "splendere" might also be related to Middle Irish "lainn," meaning "bright." "Splendent,"
"splendor," and "resplendent" first showed their lustrous senses in English during the 15th century, but "splendid" didn't show up until over 175 years later; its earliest known use dates from 1624.

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hawkshaw: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 17 is:

hawkshaw \HAWK-shaw\ noun
: detective

Example sentence:
Though she risked being late for an appointment, Amanda could not bring herself to set the book down until the novel?s hawkshaw had solved the mystery.

Did you know?
If you're a fan of mystery writing, you may have a favorite fictional detective. Perhaps it's Hercule Poirot (created by Agatha Christie), Lord Peter Wimsey (created by Dorothy L. Sayers), or Mike Hammer (created by Mickey Spillane). These and other famous sleuths from the mystery genre follow in the tradition of a fictional detective from the 19th century: Hawkshaw, a theatrical gumshoe introduced in the 1863 play _The Ticket of Leave Man_ by British dramatist Tom Taylor. "Hawkshaw" gained further popularity as a general term for a detective when the name was used for a character in a comic strip by American cartoonist Gus Mager.

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clandestine: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 16 is:

clandestine \klan-DES-tun\ adjective
: marked by, held in, or conducted with secrecy : surreptitious

Example sentence:
The commander ordered the clandestine flights over enemy territory to gather more information about the opposing forces.

Did you know?
In 1658, the English poet John Milton wrote of "clandestine Hostility cover'd over with the name of Peace." Three and a half centuries later we use "clandestine" in much the same way. The word is often used as a synonym of "secret" and "covert," and it is commonly applied to actions that involve secrecy maintained for an evil, illicit, or unauthorized purpose. It comes to us by way of Middle French from Latin "clandestinus," which is itself from "clam," meaning "secretly."

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anabasis: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 15 is:

anabasis \uh-NAB-uh-sis\ noun
*1 : a going or marching up : advance; especially : a military advance
2 : a difficult and dangerous military retreat

Example sentence:
In U.S. history class, we learned about General Sherman's famous anabasis through the South.

Did you know?
The first sense of "anabasis" follows logically enough from its roots. In Greek, the word originally meant "inland march"; it is derived from "anabainein," meaning "to go up or inland," which is formed by combining the prefix "ana-" ("up") and "bainein" ("to go"). The second and opposite sense, however, comes from an anabasis gone wrong. In 401 B.C., Greek mercenaries fighting for Cyrus the Younger marched into the Persian Empire only to find themselves cut off hundreds of miles from home. As a result, they were forced to undertake an arduous and embattled retreat across unknown territories. Xenophon, a Greek historian who accompanied the mercenaries on the march, wrote the epic narrative _Anabasis_ about this experience, and consequently "anabasis" came to mean a dramatic retreat as well as an advance.

*Indicates the sense illustrated by the example sentence.

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roister: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 14 is:

roister \ROY-ster\ verb
: to engage in noisy revelry : carouse

Example sentence:
Hugh didn't get much sleep last night because his neighbors were roistering until the wee hours of the morning.

Did you know?
As Hugo Williams asserts in _The Times Literary Supplement_ (November 15, 1991), roistering tends to be "funnier, sillier and less harmful than standard hooliganism, being based on nonsense rather than violence." Roisterers might be chagrined to learn that the word "roister" derives from a Middle French word that means "lout" or "boor" ("rustre"). Ultimately, however, it is from the fairly neutral Latin word "rusticus," meaning "rural." In the 16th century, the original English verb was simply "roist," and one who roisted was a "roister." Later, we changed the verb to "roister" and the corresponding noun to "roisterer."

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utmost: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 13 is:

utmost \UT-mohst\ adjective
1 : situated at the farthest or most distant point : extreme
*2 : of the greatest or highest degree, quantity, number, or amount

Example sentence:
Dustin has the utmost respect for his uncle, who returned to school after many years to attain his degree.

Did you know?
"Utmost" traces back to the Old English "utmest," a superlative adjective formed from the adverb "ut," meaning "out." "Utmest" eventually evolved into "utmost," perhaps influenced by the spelling of the word "most." Not surprisingly, the earlier sense of "utmost" carries the same meaning as "outermost." The second sense of "utmost," meaning "of the greatest or highest degree," first appeared in English in the 14th century but didn't see frequent use until almost 400 years later. A related word is "utter," meaning "absolute" or "total," as in the phrase "utter chaos"; it comes from Old English "utera," meaning "outer," and ultimately from "ut."

*Indicates the sense illustrated by the example sentence.

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succor: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 12 is:

succor \SUCK-er\ noun
*1 : relief; also : aid, help
2 : something that furnishes relief

Example sentence:
"The people lost all hope of succor, and fled to the mountains for refuge." (Mark Twain, _A Tramp Abroad_)

Did you know?
If you're in need of an explanation of the origins of "succor," we can help. Middle English speakers adapted "socour," the predecessor of "succor," from the Anglo-French "sucors," which essentially had the same meaning as our modern word. "Sucors," in turn, derives from the Medieval Latin "succursus," itself a derivative of the Latin verb "succurrere," meaning "to run to the rescue" or "to bring aid." That Latin verb was a composite of the prefix "sub-" (meaning "from below") and the verb "currere" (meaning "to run"). "Succor" has been saving the day in English (as both a noun and a verb) since at least the 13th century.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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wimple: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 11 is:

wimple \WIM-pul\ verb
*1 : to cover with or as if with a wimple : veil
2 : to ripple
3 chiefly Scottish : to follow a winding course : meander

Example sentence:
In Herman Melville's _Benito Cereno_, the author describes the sun as being "wimpled by ... low, creeping clouds."

Did you know?
"Wimple" is the name of the covering worn over the head and around the neck and chin by women in the late medieval period, as well as by some modern nuns. Its name is akin to Old Saxon "wimpal" and Middle Dutch "wimpel," both of which mean "veil" or "banner." Like the word "veil," "wimple" is also used as a verb meaning "cover" and was adopted by literary writers as a substitute for "ripple" and "meander," especially when writing about streams. "Over the little brook which wimpled along below towered an arch," James Russell Lowell once observed.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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Golconda: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 10 is:

Golconda \gahl-KAHN-duh\ noun
: a rich mine; broadly : a source of great wealth

Example sentence:
The junk bond market proved to be a Golconda for unscrupulous traders during the 1980s, many of whom amassed huge fortunes by trading such bonds to the unwary.

Did you know?
In the 16th century, Golconda was the capital of the Qutb Shahi kingdom in southern India, near modern Hyderabad. The city was home to one of the most powerful Muslim sultanates in the region and was the center of a flourishing diamond trade. Magnificent diamonds were taken from the mines in the hills surrounding Golconda, including Darya-e Nur (meaning "sea of light"), at 185 carats, the largest and finest diamond of the crown jewels of Iran. By the 1880s, "Golconda" was being used generically by English speakers to refer to any particularly rich mine, and later to any source of great wealth.

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obstinate: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 9 is:
obstinate \AHB-stuh-nut\ adjective
*1 : perversely adhering to an opinion, purpose, or course in spite of reason, arguments, or persuasion
2 : not easily subdued, remedied, or removed

Example sentence:
As usual, Cassie remained obstinate in her opinion even though the facts were clearly stacked against her.

Did you know?
If you're obstinate, you're just plain stubborn. "Obstinate," "dogged," "stubborn," "pertinacious," and "mulish" all mean that someone is unwilling to change course or give up a belief or plan. "Obstinate" suggests an unreasonable persistence; it's often a negative word. "Dogged," which can be more positive, implies that someone goes after something without ever tiring or quitting, while "pertinacious" suggests a persistence that can be annoying. "Stubborn" indicates a resistance to change, which may or may not be admirable. Someone who displays a really unreasonable degree of stubbornness could accurately be described as "mulish."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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thimblerig: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 8 is:

thimblerig \THIM-bul-rig\ verb
*1 : to cheat by trickery
2 : to swindle by a trick in which a small ball or pea is quickly shifted from under one to another of three small cups to fool the spectator guessing its location

Example sentence:
The appraiser looked closely at the painting and then reluctantly told us that we had been thimblerigged into buying a worthless copy.

Did you know?
The game of thimblerig seems innocent enough. The thimblerigger places a seed under one of three thimbles. He or she deftly scoots the thimbles around on a table, then asks the player to bet on which one hides the seed. But thimbleriggers are masters of sleight of hand and can move and manipulate the seed unfairly -- so the guileless player doesn't stand a chance of winning. (The poor bettor is probably unaware that "rig" has meant "to manipulate or control usually by deceptive or dishonest means" since the 1800s.) When the same sham is played with nutshells, it's called a "shell game," and there's a related game played with cards known as "three-card monte."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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askew: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 7 is:

askew \uh-SKYOO\ adjective
: out of line : awry

Example sentence:
Jeff didn't realize that the bookshelf he had hung on the wall was slightly askew until he placed a pen on it and it rolled off the edge.

Did you know?
It's believed that "askew" was formed simply by attaching the prefix "a-" -- meaning, among other things, "in (such) a state or condition" -- to "skew." The word "skew," which derives via Middle English from Anglo-French "eschiver," meaning "to escape or avoid," can be a verb, adjective, or noun. But at the time of the first appearance of "askew" in English, in the middle of the 16th century, "skew" had only been established as a verb meaning "to take an oblique course or direction." At least one etymologist has suggested that "askew" might have been influenced by an Old Norse phrase, and that the same phrase might have also given us "askance." In the past, "askew" was used synonymously with "askance," as in, "She looked at me askew after my ill-timed joke."

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canard: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 6 is:

canard \kuh-NARD\ noun
1 a : a false or unfounded report or story; especially : a fabricated report *b : a groundless rumor or belief
2 : an airplane with horizontal stabilizing and control surfaces in front of supporting surfaces; also : a small airfoil in front of the wing of an aircraft that increases the aircraft's stability

Example sentence:
"Last week's storm," Chet declared, "showed us that the claim that lightning cannot strike the same place twice is nothing more than a canard."

Did you know?
In 16th-century France "vendre des canards a moitie" was a colorful way of saying "to fool" or "to cheat." The French phrase means, literally, "to half-sell ducks." No one now knows just what was meant by "to half-sell"; the proverb was probably based on some story widely known at the time, but the details have not survived. At any rate, the expression led to the use of "canard," the French word for "duck," with the meaning "a hoax" or "a fabrication." English speakers adopted this "canard" in the mid-1800s. The aeronautical sense of "canard," used from the early days of flying, comes from the stubby duck-like appearance of the aircraft.

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louche: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 5 is:

louche \LOOSH\ adjective
: not reputable or decent

Example sentence:
Her novels are populated by louche characters wasting their days in brothels and seedy bars.

Did you know?
"Louche" ultimately comes from the Latin word "luscus," meaning "blind in one eye" or "having poor sight." This Latin term gave rise to the French "louche," meaning "squinting" or "cross-eyed." The French gave their term a figurative sense as well, taking that squinty look to mean "shady" or "devious." English speakers didn't see the need for the sight-impaired uses when they borrowed the term in the 19th century, but they kept the figurative one. The word is still quite visible today and is used to describe both people and places of questionable repute.

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multifarious: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 4 is:

multifarious \mul-tuh-FAIR-ee-us\ adjective
: having or occurring in great variety : diverse

Example sentence:
John listed his multifarious interests and activities on his college application.

Did you know?
Dictionary makers have dated the first appearance of "multifarious" in print as 1593 — and rightly so — but before that time another word similar in form and meaning was being used: "multifary," meaning "in many ways" and appearing (and disappearing) in the 15th century. Before either of the English words existed, there was the Medieval Latin word "multifarius" (same meaning as "multifarious"), from Latin "multifariam," meaning "in many places" or "on many sides." "Multi-," as you may know, is a combining form meaning "many." A relative of "multifarious" in English is "omnifarious" ("of all varieties, forms, or kinds"), created with "omni-" ("all") rather than "multi-."

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ameliorate: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 3 is:

ameliorate \uh-MEE-lee-uh-rayt\ verb
: to make better or more tolerable

Example sentence:
Access to clean water would ameliorate living conditions within the village.

Did you know?
"Ameliorate" traces back to "melior," the Latin adjective meaning "better," and is a synonym of the verbs "better" and "improve." When is it better to use "ameliorate"? If a situation is bad, "ameliorate" indicates that the conditions have been made more tolerable. Thus, one might refer to drugs that ameliorate the side effects of chemotherapy; a loss of wages ameliorated by unemployment benefits; or a harsh law ameliorated by special exceptions. "Improve" and "better" apply when what is being made better can be good or bad (as in "the weather improved" and "she bettered her lot in life"), and they should certainly be chosen over "ameliorate" when something good is getting better still ("he improved his successful program"; "she bettered her impressive scores").

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jocose: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 2 is:

jocose \joh-KOHSS\ adjective
*1 : given to joking : merry
2 : characterized by joking : humorous

Example sentence:
In the office, Ellie's lively, jocose personality keeps everyone smiling and upbeat.

Did you know?
When you need a word to describe something (or someone) that causes or is intended to cause laughter, you might pick "jocose" or a synonym such as "humorous," "witty,"
"facetious," or "jocular." Of those terms, "humorous" is the most generic and can be applied to anything that provokes laughter. "Witty" suggests cleverness and a quick mind, while "facetious" is a word for something that is not meant to be taken seriously. "Jocose" and "jocular" both imply a habitual waggishness and a fondness for joking.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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demulcent: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 1 is:

demulcent \dih-MULL-sunt\ adjective
: soothing

Example sentence:
The lozenges had a demulcent effect, and my sore throat was soon feeling much better.

Did you know?
"Demulcent" derives from the Latin verb "demulcere," meaning "to soothe." "Demulcere" in turn comes from a combination of the prefix "de-" and "mulcere," an earlier verb that also means "to soothe." As an adjective, "demulcent" often applies to the soothing nature of some medicines, but you can also use it to describe such things as a soothing voice or a soothing demeanor. The noun "demulcent" is used for a gelatinous or oily substance that is capable of soothing inflamed or abraded mucous membranes and protecting them from further irritation.

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