Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 15, 2008 is:

palmary • \PAL-muh-ree\  • adj
: outstanding, best

Example sentence:
Louis Pasteur is best known for originating pasteurization, but he also made palmary contributions in the field of immunology, including finding a vaccination for anthrax.

Did you know?
English speakers have been using "palmary" since the 1600s, and its history stretches back even further than that. It was the ancient Romans who first used their “palmarius” to describe someone or something extraordinary. “Palmarius” literally translates as "deserving the palm." But what does that mean exactly? Was it inspired by palms of hands coming together in applause? That would be a good guess, but the direct inspiration for “palmarius” was the palm leaf given to a victor in a sports competition. That other palm, the one on the hand, is loosely related. The Romans thought the palm tree's leaves resembled an outstretched palm of the hand; they thus used their word “palma” for both meanings, just as we do with "palm" in English.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 14, 2008 is:

facetious • \fuh-SEE-shuss\  • adjective
*1 : joking or jesting often inappropriately : waggish 2 : meant to be humorous or funny : not serious

Example sentence:
Gwen was being facetious when she used the word "classy" to describe Bill's brightly colored necktie.

Did you know?
"Facetious" came to English from the Middle French word "facetieux," which traces to the Latin word "facetia," meaning "jest." "Facetia" seems to have made only one other lasting contribution to the English language: "facetiae," meaning "witty or humorous writings or sayings." "Facetiae," which comes from the plural of "facetia" and is pronounced fuh-SEE-shee-ee or fuh-SEE-shee-eye, is a far less common word than "facetious," but it does show up occasionally. For example, in a letter to the editor published in the Seattle Times, August 26, 1995, a reader used the following words to describe a column written by the humorist Dave Barry: "Hey, it's a HUMOR column, based entirely upon facetiae."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 13, 2008 is:

koine • \koy-NAY\  • noun
1 : the Greek language commonly spoken and written in eastern Mediterranean countries in the Hellenistic and Roman periods *2 : a dialect or language of a region that has become the common or standard language of a larger area

Example sentence:
Koines inevitably developed in the early British colonies as different dialects converged.

Did you know?
Koine, which means "common" or "shared" in Greek, was the language spoken in the eastern Mediterranean countries from the 4th century B.C. until the time of the Byzantine emperor Justinian (mid-6th century A.D.). In linguistics, the word "koine" is applied to a language developed from contact between dialects of the same language over a large region. Basically, a koine adopts those grammatical and lexical elements from the dialects of the region that are easily recognized by most area speakers and dispenses with those that are not.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 12, 2008 is:

divulge • \duh-VULJ\  • verb
: to make known (as a confidence or secret)

Example sentence:
Sarah promised not to divulge the news of her friend's promotion until it was official.

Did you know?
It isn't vulgar to make known the roots of "divulge" -- and that sentence contains two hints about the word's origin. "Divulge" was borrowed into Middle English in the 15th century from Latin "divulgare," a word that combines the prefix "dis-," which meant "apart" or "in different directions" in Latin, with "vulgare," meaning "to make known." "Vulgare," in turn, derives from the Latin noun "vulgus," meaning "mob” or “common people." As you have no doubt guessed, English "vulgar" is another word which can be traced back to "vulgus”; it came into use about a century before "divulge.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 11, 2008 is:

hypocorism • \hye-PAH-kuh-riz-um\  • noun
*1 : a pet name 2 : the use of pet names

Example sentence:
Darren started calling Sheila by her hypocorism, “Bubbles,” when they were juniors in high school.

Did you know?
In Late Latin and Greek, the words “hypocorisma” and “hypokorisma” had the same meaning as “hypocorism” does in English today. They in turn evolved from the Greek verb “hypokorizesthai” (“to call by pet names”), which itself comes from “korizesthai” (“to caress”). “Hypocorism” joined the English language in the mid-19th century and was once briefly a buzzword among linguists, who used it rather broadly to mean “adult baby talk,” that is, the altered speech adults use when supposedly imitating babies. Once the baby talk issue faded, “hypocorism” settled back into being just a fancy word for a pet name. Pet names can be diminutives like our “Johnny” for “John,” endearing terms such as “honey-bunch,” or, yes, names from baby talk, like “Nana” for “Grandma.”

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 10, 2008 is:

posse • \PAH-see\  • noun
*1 : a large group often with a common interest 2 : a body of persons summoned by a sheriff to assist in preserving the public peace usually in an emergency 3 : a group of people temporarily organized to make a search (as for a lost child) 4 : one’s attendants or associates

Example sentence:
"On the Saturday morning we used to watch anxiously for the usual signs of activity and when we saw a large barrel of beer being escorted up the streets by a posse of small boys, we knew that all was well." (Edmund Barber, Country Life, October 12, 1951)

Did you know?
"Posse" started out as a technical term in law, part of the term "posse comitatus," which in Medieval Latin meant "power or authority of the county." As such, it referred to a group of citizens summoned by a sheriff to preserve the public peace as allowed for by law. "Preserving the public peace" so often meant hunting down a supposed criminal that "posse" eventually came to mean any group organized to make a search or embark on a mission. In even broader use it can refer to any group, period. Sometimes nowadays that group is a gang or a rock band but it can as easily be any group -- of politicians, models, architects, tourists, children, or what have you -- acting in concert.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 09, 2008 is:

indagate • \IN-duh-gayt\  • verb
: to search into : investigate

Example sentence:
The defense attorneys requested an adjournment so that they could fully indagate the new evidence.

Did you know?
A close examination of "indagate" reveals that it's a rather uncommon word. If we delve into the past, we discover that it first appeared in an English dictionary in 1623. Probing further, we see that its synonym "investigate" was already a hundred years old at the time. Despite the fact that our search turns up the derivatives "indagation," "indagator," "indagatory," and "indagative," we see that none of these words was ever used as widely as "investigation," "investigator," "investigatory," and "investigative." If we hunt for the etymology of "indagate," we sniff out the Latin verb "indagare" ("to track"), which often referred, as did Latin "investigare," specifically to tracking done by hunting dogs.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 08, 2008 is:

glom • \GLAHM\  • verb
*1 : take, steal 2 : seize, catch

Example sentence:
“She signed an affidavit of confession attesting she glommed more than $284,000, the company contends.” (Frank Donnelly, Staten Island Advance, September 15, 2008)

Did you know?
It's a classic case of glomming: Americans seized on "glaum" (a term from Scots dialect that basically means "grab") and appropriated it as our own, changing it to "glom" in the process. "Glom" first meant "steal" (as in the purse-snatching, robber kind of stealing), but over time that meaning got stretched. Today, "glom" often figuratively extends that original "steal" sense. A busy professional might glom a weekend getaway, for example. "Glom" also appears frequently in the phrase "glom on to," which can mean "to appropriate for one's own use" ("glom on to another's idea"); "to grab hold of" ("glom on to the last cookie"); or "to latch on to" ("glom on to an opinion" or "glom on to an influential friend").

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 07, 2008 is:

puissant • \PWISS-unt\  • adj
: of great force or vigor : strong, powerful

Example sentence:
Laurie was aware of the restaurant critic's puissant influence in the industry, so she became quite nervous when she spotted him sitting at a table in her café.

Did you know?
"Puissant" has some powerful ties to some more commonplace English words. Although "puissant" has a considerably fancier feel than "power" and "potent," all three words share the same Latin ancestor: "posse," a verb meaning "to be able." "Power" came to us by way of Anglo-French "poer," which is itself thought to have come from "potēre," a Vulgar Latin alteration of "posse." "Potent" came from "potent-, potens," a present participle of "posse." From "poer" came the adjective "pussant," meaning "able" or "powerful" in Anglo-French, and English speakers borrowed that to form "puissant" in the 15th century.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 06, 2008 is:

agrarian • \uh-GRAIR-ee-un\  • adjective
1 : of or relating to fields or lands or their tenure 2 *a : of, relating to, or characteristic of farmers or their way of lifeb : organized or designed to promote agricultural interests

Example sentence:
Since buying their organic farm three years ago, Ken and Sheila have been gradually adjusting to an agrarian lifestyle.

Did you know?
Today, an acre is generally considered to be a unit of land measuring 43,560 square feet (4,047 square meters). Before that standard was set, it's believed that an acre represented a rougher measurement -- the amount of land that could be plowed in one day with a yoke of oxen. Both "acre" and today's word, "agrarian," derive from the Latin noun "ager" and the Greek noun "agros," meaning "field." (You can probably guess that "agriculture" is another descendant.) "Agrarian," first used in English in the 17th century, describes things pertaining to the cultivation of fields, as well as the farmers who cultivate them.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 05, 2008 is:

cumshaw • \KUM-shaw\  • noun
: present, gratuity; also : bribe, payoff

Example sentence:
"I never heard her ask for any cumshaw that weighed less than a ton and which required fewer than a dozen enlisted men and two trucks to move." (James A. Michener, Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1986)

Did you know?
It was probably British Navy personnel who first picked up "cumshaw" in Chinese ports, during the First Opium War of 1839–42. "Cumshaw" is from a word that means "grateful thanks" in the dialect of Xiamen, a port in southeast China. Apparently, sailors heard it from the beggars who hung around the ports, and mistook it as the word for a handout. Since then, U.S. sailors have given "cumshaw" its own unique application, for something obtained through unofficial means (whether deviously or simply ingeniously). Outside of naval circles, meanings of "cumshaw" range from a harmless gratuity or gift to bending the rules a little to outright bribery.