Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 24, 2026 is:





onus • \OH-nuss\ • noun

Onus is a formal word typically used to refer to a responsibility, obligation, or burden. It is usually preceded by the word the.

// Management has made it clear that the onus is on employees to ask for further training if they don’t understand the new procedures.

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Examples:

“The [London Book Fair] comes the week before the government is due to deliver its progress report on AI and copyright, after proposals for a relaxation of existing laws caused outrage last year. Philippa Gregory, the novelist, described the plans for an ‘opt-out’ policy, which puts the onus on writers to refuse permission for their work to be trawled, as akin to putting a sign on your front door asking burglars to pass by.” — The Guardian (London), 13 Mar. 2026





Did you know?

Understanding the etymology of onus shouldn’t be a burden; it’s as simple as knowing that English borrowed the word—spelling, meaning, and all—from Latin in the 17th century. Onus is also a distant relative of the Sanskrit word anas, meaning cart (as in, a wheeled wagon or vehicle that carries a burden). English isn’t exactly loaded with words that come from Latin onus, but onerous (“difficult and unpleasant to do or deal with”) is one, which is fitting since in addition to being synonymous with “burden,” onus has also long been used to refer to obligations and responsibilities that one may find annoying, taxing, disagreeable, or distasteful.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 23, 2026 is:





expedite • \EK-spuh-dyte\ • verb

To expedite something is to cause it to happen faster.

// We’ll do what we can to expedite the processing of your application.

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Examples:

“The new task force ... is required to submit an initial report in 60 days and final report in 90 days with recommendations to simplify, improve and expedite hiring.” — Blake Paterson, NOLA.com (New Orleans, Louisiana), 7 Apr. 2026





Did you know?

Need someone to do something in a hurry? You can tell that person to step on it, or you can tell them to expedite it. Figurative feet are involved in both cases, though less obviously in the second choice. Expedite comes from the Latin verb expedire, meaning “to free from entanglement or difficulty.” The feet come in at that word’s root: it traces back to Latin ped- or pes, meaning “foot.” Expedient and expedition also stepped into English by way of expedire.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 22, 2026 is:





fraught • \FRAWT\ • adjective

Fraught describes something that causes or involves a lot of emotional stress or worry. When fraught is used in the phrase “fraught with,” it means “full of something bad or unwanted.”

// The siblings had a fraught relationship.

// The paper was poorly researched and fraught with errors.

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Examples:

"We might think replicating one of these ideas will deliver that perfectly walkable, equitable, sustainable and prosperous city of our hopeful imagination. Not likely. Many of these were hard wins, often fraught and contested in their local context." — Gia Biagi, The Chicago Tribune, 5 Apr. 2026





Did you know?

An early instance of the word fraught occurs in the 14th century poem Richard Coer de Lyon, about England's King Richard I, aka Richard the Lionheart. The line "The drowmound was so hevy fraught / That unethe myght it saylen aught" describes a large fast-sailing ship so heavily fraught—that is, loaded—that it can barely sail. The poet's use of fraught is typical for the time; originally, something that was fraught was laden with freight. For centuries, fraught continued to be used in relation to loaded ships, but that use is now considered archaic. These days, fraught is used in reference to situations that are heavy with tension, emotion, or some other weighty characteristic.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 21, 2026 is:





lacuna • \luh-KOO-nuh\ • noun

Lacuna is a formal word that refers to a gap or blank space in something—in other words, a missing part. When used with respect to biology, lacuna also refers to a small cavity, pit, or discontinuity in an anatomical structure.

// The absence of hemlock pollen from one stretch of the fossil record is a notable lacuna that suggests the tree may have once suffered from some type of blight that nearly wiped out the species.

// An osteocyte is a cell that is isolated in a lacuna of bone.

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Examples:

“At the heart of every biography ... lies a lacuna—something unknowable, no matter how candid or heavily documented the subject, no matter how familiar or diligent the biographer.” — Casey Cep, The New Yorker, 14 Apr. 2025





Did you know?

If you find yourself drawing a blank when it comes to the definition of lacuna, it might help to imagine drawing water instead, ideally from a lake or lagoon. Lacuna, lake, and lagoon all come ultimately from lacus, the Latin word for “lake.” Latin speakers modified lacus into lacuna to form a word meaning “pit,” “gap,” or “pool.” When English speakers borrowed the term in the 17th century, they used it to refer to a figurative gap in or missing portion of something, such as information or text. (Note that lacuna comes with two plural options: the Latin lacunae \luh-KYOO-nee\ or \luh-KOO-nye\, or the anglicized lacunas \luh-KOO-nuz\.) Lagoon, meanwhile, hewed closer to the Latin lacuna, referring first to a shallow sound, channel, or pond near or connected to a larger body of water, and later to a shallow artificial pool or pond.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 20, 2026 is:





cordial • \KOR-jul\ • adjective

Cordial describes someone or something that is politely pleasant and friendly.

// All the guests were assembled and given a cordial greeting by the host.

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Examples:

“The Burnside post office is a small one-­room wooden building profusely planted with flowers all around it. ... One enters a tiny vestibule and pushes a buzzer, which brings Christine out of the house, brushing by you into the ‘office’ proper, where she opens the counter window and, with a smile and a toss of her hair, says, in a cordial tone, ‘Now, my dear, what can I do for you?’” — Robert Finch, Summers in Squid Tickle: A Newfoundland Odyssey, 2025





Did you know?

The Latin root cord- (or cor) is at the heart of the connection between cordial, concord (meaning “harmony”), and discord (meaning “conflict”). Cord- means “heart,” and each of these cord- descendants has something to do with the heart, at least figuratively. Concord, which comes from com- (meaning “together” or “with”) plus -cord, suggests that one heart is with another. Discord combines the prefix dis- (meaning “apart”) with -cord to imply that hearts are apart. Hundreds of years ago, cordial could mean simply “of or relating to the (literal) heart” (the -ial is simply an adjective suffix) but today anything described as cordial—be it a friendly welcome, a compliment, or an agreement—comes from the heart in a figurative sense. Cordial is also used as a noun to refer to a usually sweet liqueur, the name being inspired by the idea that a cordial invigorates the heart.