Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 17, 2025 is:

crucible • \KROO-suh-bul\  • noun

A crucible, in the word's literal use, is a pot in which metals or other substances are heated to a very high temperature or melted. But crucible is more often encountered in figurative use referring to a difficult test or challenge, or to a place or situation that forces people to change or make difficult decisions.

// The bronze was heated to 2,100 degrees in the crucible and then poured into molds designed by the artist.

// Her latest novel follows two best friends in a fantastical, battle-ravaged kingdom who emerge from the crucible of war with opposing views and values on what should come next.

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Examples:

“... the original film follows four married couples—close friends who reunite once a year for a weeklong vacation together. On the surface, the retreat is meant to help them relax and reconnect, but it quickly becomes a crucible for examining the cracks in their relationships.” — Matt Grobar, Deadline, 1 Oct. 2025

Did you know?

Unless you're studying Arthur Miller's The Crucible in school, it may not be crucial to learn the story behind crucible, but it can't hurt! Crucible looks like it should be closely related to the Latin combining form cruc- (“cross”); however, unlike crucial, it isn't. It was forged instead from the Medieval Latin crucibulum, a noun for an earthen pot used to melt metals, and in English it first referred to a vessel made of a very heat-resistant material (such as porcelain) used for melting a substance that requires a high degree of heat. It's possible that the resemblance between cruc- and crucible encouraged people to start using crucible to mean “a severe trial,” as that sense is synonymous with one meaning of cross, but the idea of simmering in a literal crucible also sounds plenty severe. The newest sense of crucible (“a situation in which great changes take place,” as in “forged in the crucible of war”) recalls the fire and heat required to transform some solids into liquids.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 16, 2025 is:

writhe • \RYTHE\  • verb

To writhe is to twist one's body from side to side. The word is often used when the body or a bodily part is twisting in pain.

// The injured player lay on the football field, writhing in pain.

// At the instruction of their teacher, the children rolled the fallen log aside to reveal worms and other small critters writhing in the soft earth.

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Examples:

“The creatures named after writers are mostly bugs, which makes sense. There are a lot of those little guys writhing around, and I imagine most of them escaped our attention for long enough that science had to start reaching for new names. And a lot of them are wasps: Dante has two wasps named after him; Marx has two, Didion has one, Dickens has two, Zola has two, Thoreau has seven, and Shakespeare has three wasps and a bacterium. Nabokov has a lot of butterflies, naturally.” — James Folta, LitHub.com, 25 Aug. 2025

Did you know?

Writhe wound its way to us from the Old English verb wrīthan, meaning “to twist,” and that ancestral meaning lives on in the word's current uses, most of which have to do with twists of one kind or another. Among the oldest of these uses is the meaning “to twist into coils or folds,” but in modern use writhing is more often about the physical contortions of one suffering from debilitating pain or attempting to remove oneself from a tight grasp (as, say, a snake from a hawk's talons). The word is also not infrequently applied to the twisting bodies of dancers. The closest relation of writhe in modern English lacks any of the painful connotations often present in writhe: wreath comes from Old English writha, which shares an ancestor with wrīthan.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 15, 2025 is:

radial • \RAY-dee-ul\  • adjective

Radial describes things that are arranged or have parts arranged in straight lines coming out from the center of a circle.

// Her mosaics echo radial patterns observed in nature, from succulents to sea urchins.

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Examples:

"Inspired by flowers that grow organically, the project transforms organic patterns into space arrangements, embodying the idea of blooming. The design distills the essence of a flower's radial symmetry into a geometric language, creating a rhythmic play of radial patterns and sunburst lines." — Architecture Update (India), 19 Feb. 2025

Did you know?

Picture the sun shining brightly on a cloudless day. Its rays stretch in every direction along radiant radii so far-reaching they radiate daylight. It's pretty rad, and it's a cinch to describe in English thanks to the expansive influence of the Latin noun radius, meaning "ray." As you might have guessed, radius is an ancestor of the English words ray, radiant, radiate, and of course radius. It's also the sunny source of radial, which joined our language in the 1500s as an adjective meaning "arranged or having parts arranged like rays." Radial has bourgeoned in meaning over the centuries, adopting unique applications across many fields including medicine, engineering, and astronomy.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 14, 2025 is:

heyday • \HAY-day\  • noun

Heyday refers to the period of one's greatest popularity, vigor, or prosperity. It is usually used in the singular.

// In its heyday, the circus was a major form of entertainment for the small town.

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Examples:

"In its heyday, there were more than 200 Chi-Chi's nationwide; the last restaurant closed in 2004." — Nicole Hvidsten, The Minnesota Star Tribune, 1 Oct. 2025

Did you know?

The day in heyday originally had nothing to do with the kind of day that's made up of 24 hours. Heyday was first used in the first half of the 16th century as an extended form of the interjection hey, used since the 13th century to express elation or wonder, as it still often is in phrases like "hey, look at that!" The day part was most likely just an extra syllable tagged on for effect. By the end of the 16th century heyday had developed noun use with the meaning "high spirits," as when Shakespeare's Hamlet tells his mother, "You cannot call it love; for at your age / The heyday in the blood is tame …” It wasn't until the 18th century that the day syllable's resemblance to the word day likely influenced the development of the now-familiar use referring to the period when one's achievement or popularity has reached its zenith.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 13, 2025 is:

peremptory • \puh-REMP-tuh-ree\  • adjective

Peremptory is a formal word used especially in legal contexts to describe an order, command, etc., that requires immediate compliance with no opportunity to show why one should not comply. It is also used disapprovingly to describe someone with an arrogant attitude, or something indicative of such an attitude.

// The soldiers were given a peremptory order to abandon the mission.

// The company's president tends to adopt a peremptory manner especially at the negotiating table.

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Examples:

“Cook had changed. He seemed restless and preoccupied. There was a peremptory tone, a raw edge in some of his dealings. Perhaps he had started to believe his own celebrity. Or perhaps, showing his age and the long toll of so many rough miles at sea, he had become less tolerant of the hardships and drudgeries of transoceanic sailing.” — Hampton Sides, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, 2024

Did you know?

Peremptory comes from the Latin verb perimere, meaning “to take entirely” or “to destroy,” which in turn combines the prefix per- (“throughout” or “thoroughly”) and the verb emere (“to take”). Peremptory implies the removal of one's option to disagree or contest something, and sometimes suggests an abrupt dictatorial manner combined with an unwillingness to tolerate disobedience or dissent, as in “employees given a peremptory dismissal.” Not to sound peremptory ourselves, but don't confuse peremptory with the similar-sounding (and related) adjective preemptive, meaning “marked by the seizing of the initiative,” as in “a preemptive attack.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 12, 2025 is:

abide • \uh-BYDE\  • verb

If someone cannot abide someone or something bad, unpleasant, etc., they cannot tolerate or accept that person or thing. Abide can also mean "to accept without objection" and "to remain or continue."

// I just can't abide such blatant dishonesty.

// Residents agree to abide by the dorm's rules.

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Examples:

"If a legal party ... doesn't like a district court ruling, it is free to challenge the decision to a federal appellate court and then the Supreme Court. But while the appeal plays out, the legal party must abide by the ruling." — Will Rogers, The Baltimore Sun, 22 July 2025

Did you know?

Abide has abided in the English language since before the 12th century, picking up along the way several meanings and inflections that are now rare or no longer in use. For instance, one of abide's former meanings was "to stop" and its former past participle was abidden (whereas we now use abided or abode). Today, abide often turns up in the phrase "can't abide" to say that someone cannot tolerate or accept something. The expression abide by, which means "to accept and be guided by (something)," is also common. Related terms include abiding, meaning "continuing for a long time" or "not changing" (as in "an abiding friendship"), abidance ("continuance" or "the act or process of doing what you have been asked or ordered to do"), and abode ("the place where someone lives").

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 11, 2025 is:

doughty • \DOW-tee\  • adjective

Doughty is a word with an old-fashioned flair used to describe someone who is brave, strong, and determined.

// The monument celebrates the doughty townspeople who fended off invaders centuries ago.

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Examples:

“The film chooses to render our doughty heroes' super-costumes as cerulean-blue rollneck sweaters, which is a puzzling choice both aesthetically and practically: knitwear seems literally ill-fitted to derring-do.” — Glen Weldon, NPR, 25 July 2025

Did you know?

There's no doubt that doughty has persevered in the English language—it's traceable all the way back to the Old English word dohtig—but how to pronounce it? One might assume that doughty should be pronounced \DAW-tee\, paralleling similarly spelled words like bought and sought, or perhaps with a long o, as in dough. But the vowel sound in doughty is the same as in doubt, and in fact, over the centuries, doughty's spelling was sometimes confused with that of the now obsolete word doubty (“full of doubt”), which could be the reason we have the pronunciation we use today. The homophonous dowdy (“having a dull or uninteresting appearance”) can also be a source of confusion; an easy way to remember the difference is that you can't spell doughty without the letters in tough (“physically and emotionally strong”).

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 10, 2025 is:

temerity • \tuh-MAIR-uh-tee\  • noun

Temerity is the quality of being confident and unafraid of danger or punishment, especially in a way that seems rude or foolish. Temerity may also refer to a rash or reckless act.

// She had the temerity to ask me for another loan when she had yet to begin repaying the first one.

// The students somehow convinced the principal that a prank of such temerity warranted only three days' detention.

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Examples:

"Once upon a time, music critics were known for being crankier than the average listener. [Taylor] Swift once castigated a writer who'd had the temerity to castigate her, singing, 'Why you gotta be so mean?'" — Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2025

Did you know?

When you're feeling saucy, there's no shortage of words in the English language you can use to describe the particular flavor of your metaphorical sauce, from audacity and effrontery to the Yiddish-derived fan favorite chutzpah. If we may be so bold, let us also suggest temerity: it comes from the Latin temere, meaning "recklessly" or "haphazardly," and is good for suggesting boldness even in the face of danger or likely punishment. Temerity is a formal word, rarely used in casual writing or conversation, but provided you have the cheek to flout this convention, you may be thinking "what have I got to lose?"

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 9, 2025 is:

improvident • \im-PRAH-vuh-dunt\  • adjective

Improvident is a formal word used to describe something that does not foresee or provide for the future, especially with regard to money. An improvident relationship, habit, or practice is financially unwise or impractical.

// The directors were blasted at the committee hearing for their improvident use of public money.

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Examples:

“The problem is worst in affluent countries like the U.S., where more than two hundred pounds of food per person get thrown away each year. ‘Even modest food waste reductions would translate into considerable cumulative savings,' Smil observes. Then, there's the waste that results from improvident eating habits. If photosynthesis has a low conversion rate, feeding crops to animals compounds the problem many times over.” — Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 23 June 2025

Did you know?

Improvident describes someone's actions or habits as being unwise with regard to saving or providing for the future. It's a formal word, but the behavior it describes is well illustrated by many of the stories people hear or read as children, including some of the world's oldest. In Aesop's fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” the grasshopper could certainly be called improvident—he spends all summer singing and dancing while the ant works hard to prepare for winter by storing food, and at the end of the short tale is cold and starving. While today improvident is used mostly in the context of money, and those who are irresponsible with it, one can be improvident with other things (such as time or food), even happily. In another children's tale, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, author Beatrix Potter introduces the titular family of bunnies, sleepy from eating too much lettuce, as follows: “they were very improvident and cheerful.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 8, 2025 is:

bromide • \BROH-myde\  • noun

A bromide is a statement intended to make someone feel happier or calmer, but too dull and unoriginal to be effective.

// Their speech had nothing more to offer than the usual bromides about how everyone needs to work together.

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Examples:

“According to the old bromide, the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. My grandfather, who had limited formal education but a wealth of common sense, countered that with, ‘Just water and fertilize your own grass. After all, it's your grass and you are in charge of how it grows! Besides, that other stuff may be nothing but AstroTurf.'” — Rodger Dean Duncan, Forbes, 4 Sept. 2024

Did you know?

A bromide is a statement so worn and trite as to be ineffective when it's offered to make someone feel better. Before the sigh-inducing type, though, bromides were most familiar in compounds like potassium bromide, used in the late 19th century as a sedative to treat everything from epilepsy to sleeplessness. (The chemical element bromine had been discovered in 1826.) Such compounds fell from use with the invention of barbiturates in the early 20th century, around the same time that the word bromide started to be applied to anything or anyone dull enough to make one drowsy.