Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 15, 2026 is:

tenuous • \TEN-yoo-us\  • adjective

Something described as tenuous is flimsy, weak, or uncertain.

// The theater had a tenuous existence for years, but today is on much more solid financial footing.

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Examples:

“While more non-screen-based interactive technology could be an antidote to our screen-obsessed society, it’s an extremely tenuous link to more human interaction ...” — Jennifer Pattinson Tuohy, The Verge, 4 May 2026

Did you know?

Lean into the history of tenuous and you’ll find that the word comes to English from the Latin adjective tenuis, meaning “fine-drawn, thin, narrow, or slight,” and is a relative of thin. Like that more familiar word, tenuous has a wide array of meanings: it can describe a literal thinness, as in “a silkworm’s tenuous threads,” or rarity (the opposite of density), as in “a tenuous fluid,” or it can describe things that are figuratively thin or flimsy. If one team in a game has a tenuous lead, either team still has a chance at winning. If there is only a tenuous connection between two events, those events are likely unrelated.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 14, 2026 is:

emblazon • \im-BLAY-zun\  • verb

To emblazon something is to decorate its surface, usually with a name, slogan, or picture.

// Her favorite souvenir from her trip to the Grand Canyon was a t-shirt emblazoned with a rosy sunset over the famous chasm.

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Examples:

“Later that week we were boarding our flight with the painting secured in an enormous case with a toothy, bespectacled cartoon squirrel emblazoned on the back and a speech bubble that read ‘I’M JUST NUTS ABOUT PUZZLES!’” — Orlando Whitfield, All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art, 2025

Did you know?

Blazon is a less commonly used synonym of the more familiar coat of arms. Both centuries-old terms refer to heraldic designs, symbols, and other imagery (think crosses, lions, stripes, etc.) that typically appear on banners, shields, armor, and elsewhere. The verb form of blazon meaning “to depict heraldic figures or designs in drawing or engraving” and emblazon, “to inscribe or adorn with or as if with heraldic figures or designs,” came into use around the same time in the late 1500s, from the French spoken in medieval England. (The word heraldry, also ultimately from Anglo-French, came into use then too.) Emblazon still refers to marking something with an emblem of heraldry, but it is now more often used for adorning or publicizing something in any conspicuous way, whether with eye-catching decoration or colorful words of praise.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 13, 2026 is:

hale • \HAIL\  • adjective

Someone described as hale is in good and often exceptional health. Hale is commonly used in the phrase "hale and hearty."

// Their mother remains hale and hearty in her old age.

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Examples:

"Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell star [in the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes] as two vivacious all-American showgirls whose friendship is as fast as their attitudes to men are poles apart. Whereas Monroe's Lorelei Lee prizes wealth and devotion in a suitor, Russell's Dorothy Shaw is more inclined towards the hale and hunky ..." — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph (United Kingdom), 2 May 2026

Did you know?

English has two hale homographs: the adjective that is frequently paired with hearty to describe those healthy and strong, and the somewhat uncommon verb that has to do with literal or figurative hauling or pulling. (One can hale a boat onto shore, or hale a person into a courtroom with the aid of legal ramifications for resistance.) The verb comes from the Middle English halen (also the root of our word haul), but the adjective has a bifurcated origin, with two Middle English terms identified as sources: hale and hail. Both of those come from words meaning "healthy," the former from the Old English hāl, and the latter from the Old Norse heill. The Middle English hail is also the source of the three modern English words spelled as hail, the verb, interjection, and noun that have to do with greeting.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 12, 2026 is:

blandishment • \BLAN-dish-munt\  • noun

Blandishments are nice things that you say or do to convince someone to do something. Blandishment is usually used in the plural form.

// Despite the many blandishments of the dressing room attendant, we were resolved not to overspend at the fashion boutique.

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Examples:

“… he sought to turn the attack around by saying his vast wealth—which has allowed him to richly fund his political endeavors—made him immune to the blandishments of plutocrats and corporate interests.” — Mark Z. Barabak, The Los Angeles Times, 23 Feb. 2026

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 “influencing others by flattery,” 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 11, 2026 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.

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Examples:

“If he was once more cautious in interviews, coming across as a little saturnine, he’s looser now, illuminated by flashes of wry humour.” — Patrick Smith, The Independent (United Kingdom), 1 Feb. 2026

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 astrologers today) believed those who are born when Saturn is rising in the sky 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 10, 2026 is:

foible • \FOY-bul\  • noun

Foibles are minor flaws or shortcomings in someone's character or behavior. In fencing, foible refers to the weakest part of a sword's blade, between the middle and point.

// You have to be able to laugh at your own foibles.

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Examples:

"The British sketch comedy troupe Monty Python loved taking aim at contemporary foibles through its twisted and liberal reading of history." — David Faris, The Week, 29 Apr. 2026

Did you know?

Many word lovers agree that the pen is mightier than the sword. But be they honed in wit or form, even the sharpest tools in the shed have their flaws. That’s where foible comes in handy. Borrowed from French in the 1600s, the word originally referred to the weakest part of a fencing sword, that part being the portion between the middle and the pointed tip. The English foible soon came to be applied not only to weaknesses in blades but also to minor failings in character. Foible ultimately traces back to the Old French term feble, which is also the source of our English adjective feeble.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 9, 2026 is:

deleterious • \del-uh-TEER-ee-us\  • adjective

Deleterious is a word used in formal speech and writing to describe something that is damaging or harmful, usually in a subtle or unexpected way.

// Though effective at keeping pests away from plants, the spray is no longer used because of its deleterious effects on the respiratory system.

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Examples:

“Canceling email addresses used by alumni over many years could have deleterious consequences for professional networking, which will become increasingly important as the AI roll-out accelerates and disrupts careers for thousands of college graduates.” — William Golz, NOLA.com (New Orleans, Louisiana), 15 Apr. 2026

Did you know?

When you hold down the delete key on your keyboard or touchscreen, the effect—whoosh!—is instantaneous. Deleterious effects, however, are often not so obvious; deleterious (ultimately from a Greek word meaning “to hurt”) is used to describe things that are harmful in ways that are unexpected, slow-acting, or not readily apparent. Although most often used in formal speech and writing, deleterious is far from rare. It even pops up from time to time in film and television, especially from the mouths of wonky characters, as when Seven of Nine warns the Doctor in an episode of Star Trek Voyager, “The nebula is having a deleterious effect on all the ship’s technology,” or when Higgins exclaims in the original Magnum P.I. series, “It’s shocking what a deleterious effect a regimen of nothing but mushrooms can have on a man.” We’ll take your word for it, Higgins.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 8, 2026 is:

accoutrement • \uh-KOO-truh-munt\  • noun

An accoutrement is a piece of clothing or equipment that is used in a particular place or for a particular activity. In military contexts, accoutrement refers specifically to a soldier's outfit. The word can also refer to an identifying and often superficial characteristic or device. Accoutrement in any of its uses is often pluralized.

// They have all the accoutrements that a baker could ever want, including a robust collection of cookie cutters and a veritable wardrobe of vintage aprons.

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Examples:

"From the spectacularly colorful Parade of Flags ... to the customary dress and cultural accoutrements of the nations, we see just how rich, varied and wonderful are the backgrounds of these students who have traveled far to study among us." – The Commercial Dispatch (Columbus, Mississippi), 14 Apr. 2026

Did you know?

Accoutrement and its rarer relative accoutre, a verb meaning "to provide with equipment or furnishings" or "to outfit," have been appearing in English texts since the 16th century. Today both words have variant spellings—accouterment and accouter, respectively. The pair's French ancestor, accoutrer, descends from an Old French word meaning "to put in place" and may ultimately trace back to the Latin word consuere, meaning "to sew together." Some etymological stitching is visible in another English word: couture, a word referring to the business of making fashionable clothes, as well as to the clothes themselves, is a direct French borrowing that ultimately descends from consuere.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 7, 2026 is:

MacGyver • \muh-GHYE-ver\  • verb

To MacGyver something is to make, form, or repair it with materials that are conveniently on hand.

// Social media websites are full of videos that show people MacGyvering everything from a life jacket out of a pair of pants to a stove using three metal cans and some dirt.

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Examples:

“Maybe your shovel broke the first time you tried to clear wet, heavy snow off your sidewalk and you never replaced it. ... Of course, before you start MacGyvering a shovel from spare parts in your garage, you can ask a neighbor for assistance or make a few phone calls and pay for a service to clear your driveway or sidewalks.” — Caroline Anschutz, SlashGear.com, 28 Jan. 2026

Did you know?

Angus MacGyver, as portrayed by actor Richard Dean Anderson in the titular, action-packed television series MacGyver, was many things—including a secret agent, a Swiss Army knife enthusiast, and a convert to vegetarianism—but he was no MacGuffin (a character that keeps the plot in motion despite lacking intrinsic importance). In fact, so memorable was this man, his mullet, and his ability to use whatever was available to him—often simple things, such as a paper clip, chewing gum, or a rubber band—to escape a sticky situation or to make a device to help him complete a mission, that people began associating his name with making quick fixes or finding innovative solutions to immediate problems. Hence the verb MacGyver, a slang term meaning to “make, form, or repair (something) with what is conveniently on hand.” After years of steadily increasing and increasingly varied usage following the show’s run from 1985 to 1992 (tracked in some detail here), MacGyver was added to our online dictionary in 2022.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 6, 2026 is:

valedictory • \val-uh-DIK-tuh-ree\  • adjective

Valedictory describes something expressing or containing a farewell.

// The valedictory speech given by the department chair moved several faculty members to tears.

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Examples:

“Did I regret not catching a retrospective showing of ‘Little Miss Sunshine,’ in a special valedictory program of Sundance sensations from over the years? Perhaps—though not as much as I regretted missing the screening of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s ‘Half Nelson’ (2006). That’s the title that I remember most fondly from my first year at Sundance ...” — Justin Chang, The New Yorker, 31 Jan. 2026

Did you know?

Valedictory addresses delivered by valedictorians at high school and college graduations are as much a sign of spring in the United States as baseball games and cookouts. Though we don’t know where the first valedictory address was given, we do know that such addresses were an institution at some colleges in the U.S. by the time Noah Webster wrote his famous 1828 dictionary. (We also know that valedictory was used in non-academic settings—mostly churches, and especially in the phrase “valedictory sermon”—from the mid-1600s.) Since a valedictory speech is given at the end of an academic career, it is perfectly in keeping with the meaning of its Latin ancestor, valedīcere, which means “to say goodbye.”