Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 1, 2025 is:

pseudonym • \SOO-duh-nim\  • noun

A pseudonym is a name that someone (such as a writer) uses instead of their real name.

// bell hooks is the pseudonym of the American writer Gloria Jean Watkins.

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Examples:

“Edgar Wright, the filmmaker and genre specialist who has given the world modern gems like Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Baby Driver, estimates he was around 13 years old when he read ‘the Bachman Books,' a collection of four novels that Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman during the early years of his career.” — Don Kaye, Den of Geek, 9 Oct. 2025

Did you know?

Pseudonym has its origins in the Greek adjective pseudōnymos, which means “bearing a false name.” French speakers adopted the Greek word as the noun pseudonyme, and English speakers later modified the French word into pseudonym. Many celebrated authors have used pseudonyms. Samuel Clemens wrote under the pseudonym “Mark Twain,” Charles Lutwidge Dodgson assumed the pseudonym “Lewis Carroll,” and Mary Ann Evans used “George Eliot” as her pseudonym.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 30, 2025 is:

iconoclast • \eye-KAH-nuh-klast\  • noun

Iconoclast originally referred to someone who destroys religious images or who opposes their veneration. It is now used to refer broadly to anyone who criticizes or opposes beliefs and practices that are widely accepted.

// The comedian had developed a reputation as a contrarian and an iconoclast for whom no topic was off-limits.

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Examples:

“Chicago will be the only U.S. city to see the 92-year-old iconoclast Yoko Ono's new show. ... ‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind' goes back to the start of the artist's career in the mid-'50s, and the role she played in the creative worlds of New York, Tokyo and London.” — Carrie Shepherd, Axios, 1 Apr. 2025

Did you know?

Iconoclast comes from the Middle Greek word eikonoklástēs, which translates literally as “image destroyer.” While the destruction wrought by today's iconoclasts is figurative—in modern use, an iconoclast is someone who criticizes or opposes beliefs and practices that are widely accepted—the first iconoclasts directed their ire at religious icons, those representations of sacred individuals used as objects of veneration. The Byzantine Empire's Iconoclastic Controversy occurred in the 8th and 9th centuries, but the word iconoclast didn't find its way to English until the 17th century. Figurative use came later still.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 29, 2025 is:

exculpatory • \ek-SKUL-puh-tor-ee\  • adjective

Something described as exculpatory serves to prove that someone is not guilty of doing something wrong.

// Their lawyer presented insurmountable exculpatory evidence at the trial.

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Examples:

“That agreement also requires prosecutors to implement new policies to prevent the misuse of informants, maintain records and audits, and to disclose exculpatory evidence to criminal defendants involving snitches.” — Salvador Hernandez, The Los Angeles Times, 18 Jan. 2025

Did you know?

Exculpatory is the adjectival form of the verb exculpate, meaning “to clear from guilt.” The pair of words cannot be accused of being secretive—their joint etymology reveals all: they are tied to the Medieval Latin verb exculpare, a word that combines the prefix ex-, meaning “out of” or “away from,” with the Latin noun culpa, meaning “blame.” The related but lesser-known terms inculpate (“to incriminate”) and inculpatory (“implying or imputing guilt”) are antonyms of exculpate and exculpatory. A related adjective, culpable, describes someone or something deserving of blame. All of these words are found most often in formal speech and writing, but if you choose to drop them into everyday conversation, your dictionary exculpates you.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 28, 2025 is:

sustain • \suh-STAYN\  • verb

To sustain someone or something is to provide what is needed for that person or thing to exist or continue. Sustain also means "to hold up the weight of," "to suffer or endure," or "to confirm or prove." In legal contexts, to sustain something is to decide or state that it is proper, legal, or fair.

// Hope sustained us during that difficult time.

// The shed roof collapsed, unable to sustain the weight of all the snow.

// The athlete sustained serious injuries during last week's game.

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Examples:

"Pushing fallen leaves into garden beds to insulate plants and nourish the soil will also shelter hibernating insects that, in turn, will sustain ground-feeding birds. It's much better for the ecosystem—and easier for the gardener—than bagging them up and sending them to a landfill." — Jessica Damiano, The Chicago Daily Herald, 12 Oct. 2025

Did you know?

The word sustain is both handy and hardy. Its use has been sustained since the days of Middle English (it traces back to the Latin verb sustinēre meaning "to hold up" or "to sustain") by its utility across a variety of consequential subjects, from environmental protections to legal proceedings to medical reports. The word is so prevalent and so varied in its application, in fact, that it enjoys sustained high ranking as one of our top lookups—evidence of our readers' sustained commitment to, well, sustaining themselves with information about words.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 27, 2025 is:

cornucopia • \kor-nuh-KOH-pee-uh\  • noun

A cornucopia, also known as a horn of plenty, is a curved, hollow goat's horn or similarly shaped receptacle (such as a horn-shaped basket) that is overflowing, especially with fruit and vegetables. The image of a cornucopia is commonly used as decoration and as a symbol of abundance, but the word cornucopia is today more often encountered in its metaphorical use referring to an overflowing abundance, or to a seemingly inexhaustible amount of something.

// The zoo's new aviary is a veritable cornucopia of color and sound, with scores of different bird species swooping and squawking through the canopy.

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Examples:

“It was rather dark in there. ... However, the counters and their cornucopia of offerings were brightly lit. Want chocolate bars? Nasal sprays? Gummy bears? Bath bombs? Tinctures? Vapes? Mints? Jellies? Peanut butter cups? Lemonade? Fruit punch?” — Marla Jo Fisher, The Orange County (California) Register, 1 Sept. 2025

Did you know?

Cornucopia comes from the Late Latin phrase cornu copiae, which translates literally as “horn of plenty.” A traditional staple of feasts, the cornucopia is believed to represent the horn of a goat from Greek mythology. According to legend, it was from this horn, which could be filled with whatever the owner wished, that the god Zeus was fed as an infant by his nurse, the nymph Amalthaea. Later, the horn was filled with flowers and fruits, and given as a present to Zeus. The filled horn (or a receptacle resembling it) has long served as a traditional symbol in art and decoration to suggest a store of abundance. The word first appeared in English in the early 16th century; a century later, it developed the figurative sense of “an overflowing supply.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 26, 2025 is:

unabashed • \un-uh-BASHT\  • adjective

Someone who is unabashed is not embarrassed or ashamed about openly expressing strong feelings or opinions.

// Unabashed by their booing and hissing, the artist continued with the musical performance.

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Examples:

“Take the melodramatic storyline of a telenovela and tell it through the unabashed mediums of opera and drag, and you'll have ‘Inebria Me,' the subversive experimental opera by San Cha ending its West Coast tour at REDCAT this month. Latin dance fuses with queer storytelling as the sounds of ... punk, classical and electronic make up the performance, which pulls from creator San Cha's 2019 album ‘La Luz de la Esperanza.'” — Katerina Portela, The Los Angeles Times, 3 Oct. 2025

Did you know?

To abash someone is to shake up their composure or self-possession, as illustrated by Charlotte Brontë in her 1849 novel Shirley: “He had never blushed in his life; no humiliation could abash him.” When you are unabashed you make no apologies for your behavior, nor do you attempt to hide or disguise it; but when you are abashed your confidence has been thrown off and you may feel rather inferior or ashamed of yourself. English speakers have been using abashed to describe feelings of embarrassment since the 14th century, but they have only used unabashed (brazenly or otherwise) since the 15th century (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 25, 2025 is:

perdition • \per-DISH-un\  • noun

Perdition refers to hell, or to the state of being in hell forever as punishment after death—in other words, damnation. It is usually used figuratively.

// Dante's Inferno details the main character's journey through perdition.

// It's this kind of selfishness that leads down the road to perdition.

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Examples:

“AC/DC has been criticized for sticking to its straightforward musical formula for more than 50 staggering years, but there's little denying the appeal of the group's adrenalized and reliable approach. As Angus Young stated in the liner notes for a reissue of ‘The Razor's Edge,' ‘AC/DC equals power. That's the basic idea.' That energetic jolt is sometimes the perfect means to raise spirits and spread actual joy, even coming from a band offering the cartoonish imagery of plastic horns and travel down the road to perdition.” — Jeff Elbel, The Chicago Sun-Times, 25 May 2025

Did you know?

Perdition is a word that gives a darn, and then some. It was borrowed into English in the 14th century from the Anglo-French noun perdiciun and ultimately comes from the Latin verb perdere, meaning “to destroy.” Among the earliest meanings of perdition was, appropriately, “utter destruction,” as when Shakespeare wrote of the “perdition of the Turkish fleet” in Othello. This sense, while itself not utterly destroyed, doesn't see much use anymore; perdition is today used almost exclusively for eternal damnation or the place where such destruction of the soul occurs.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 24, 2025 is:

amalgamate • \uh-MAL-guh-mayt\  • verb

Amalgamate is a formal verb meaning "to unite (two or more things) into one thing."

// The school district has proposed amalgamating the two high schools.

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Examples:

"Ten years ago, there were 339 credit unions in Ireland, but that is down to 187, according to Central Bank figures. Part of the rationale for credit unions to amalgamate to create larger units is so they can expand their mortgage and business lending." — Charlie Weston, The Irish Independent, 28 Aug. 2025

Did you know?

Today, one can amalgamate—that is, combine into one—any two (or more) things, such as hip-hop and country music, for example. The origins of amalgamate, however, have more to do with heavy metal. Amalgamate comes from the Medieval Latin verb amalgamāre, meaning "to combine (a metal) with mercury." It's been part of English since the 1500s, its introduction closely trailing that of the noun amalgam (from the Medieval Latin amalgama), which in its oldest use means "a mixture of mercury and another metal." (In dentistry, amalgams combining liquid mercury with powders containing silver, tin, and other metals are sometimes used for filling holes in teeth). The word amalgamate can be used either technically, implying the creation of an alloy of mercury, or more generally for the formation of any compound or combined entity.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 23, 2025 is:

desolate • \DESS-uh-lut\  • adjective

Desolate describes places that lack people, plants, animals, etc., that make people feel welcome in a place; desolate places are, in other words, deserted or barren. Desolate can also mean “joyless” or “gloomy.”

// We drove for hours along a desolate stretch of road until finally a lone gas station appeared in the middle of nowhere.

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Examples:

“... the great novelists were my guide, and none more so than my grandfather. I learnt from him complexity of motivation, a willingness to take risks with storytelling, and the vital importance of landscape. Like Thomas Hardy, my grandfather was able to make his readers see what he wrote, whether it be the beauty of Rivendell or the desolate landscapes of Mordor.” — Simon Tolkien, LitHub.com, 29 May 2025

Did you know?

The word desolate hasn't strayed far from its Latin roots: its earliest meaning of “deserted” mirrors that of its Latin source dēsōlātus, which comes from the verb dēsōlāre, meaning “to leave all alone; forsake; empty of inhabitants.” That word's root is sōlus, meaning “lone; acting without a partner; lonely; deserted,” source too of the “lonely” words sole, soliloquy, solitary, solitude, and solo. Desolate also functions as a verb (its last syllable rhymes with wait rather than what) with its most common meanings being “to lay waste” and “to make wretched; to make someone deeply dejected or distressed.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 22, 2025 is:

metonymy • \muh-TAH-nuh-mee\  • noun

Metonymy refers to a figure of speech in which a word that is associated with something is used to refer to the thing itself, as when crown is used to mean “king” or “queen.”

// Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood are common examples of metonymy.

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Examples:

“The stick used to command the crowd is called a ‘brigadier.' A brigadier is usually used to describe one who commands a military brigade, yes, but does not a stage manager lead his theater brigade? That's the idea, according to organizers. It was a term used so often to refer to a stick-wielding stage manager that, through the magic of metonymy, the stick itself is now referred to as a brigadier.” — Emma Bowman, NPR, 6 Aug. 2024

Did you know?

When Mark Antony asks the people of Rome to lend him their ears in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar he is asking them to listen to him, not to literally allow him to borrow their ears. It's a classic example of the rhetorical device known as metonymy, which comes to English (via Latin) from the Greek word of the same meaning, metōnymia: the use of a word that is associated with something to refer to the thing itself. Metonymy often appears in news articles and headlines, as when journalists use the term crown to refer to a king or queen. Another common example is the use of an author's name to refer to works written by that person, as in “They are studying Austen.” Metonymy is closely related to synecdoche, which is a figure of speech in which the word for a part of something is used to refer to the thing itself (as in “need some extra hands for the project”), or less commonly, the word for a thing itself is used to refer to part of that thing (as when society denotes “high society”).