Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 4, 2026 is:





redolent • \RED-uh-lunt\ • adjective

As a synonym of aromatic, the word redolent can describe something that has a noticeable smell without specifying the scent, but more often it is accompanied by of or with and means “full of a specified fragrance,” as in “redolent with incense.” Redolent can also describe something that causes thoughts or memories of something, as in “music redolent of the 1980s.”

// The late-spring meadow was redolent of wildflowers and petrichor.

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Examples:

“The store is redolent with the aroma of warm chocolate and an ambience evoking the agricultural roots of cacao with plants and growing tunnels.” — Robert Channick, The Chicago Tribune, 13 Feb. 2026





Did you know?

Redolent traces back to the Latin verb olēre (“to smell”) and is a relative of olfactory, “of, relating to, or connected with the sense of smell.” In its earliest English uses in the 15th century, redolent simply meant “having an aroma.” Today, it usually applies to a place or thing permeated with odors. Scent and memory are famously linked, and an extended use of redolent to mean “evocative” or “suggestive” links them again, as in “lollipops redolent of childhood.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 3, 2026 is:





engender • \in-JEN-der\ • verb

Engender is a formal word that means “to be the source or cause of something.”

// Our monthly book club meetings started as a way to connect and ended up being a great place to engender unity and build life-long friendships.

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Examples:

“... ‘During a moment defined by anti-intellectualism, escapism, and AI tools that let you skip cognitive work entirely ... intellectual creators are doing something kinda countercultural,’ says Death To Stock’s culture researcher Agus Panzoni. These influencers, who have already built established communities around intellectual pursuits, hold greater meaning and engender more trust ...” — Markiel Magsalin, Vogue, 15 Apr. 2026





Did you know?

A good paragraph about engender will engender understanding in the reader. Like its synonym generate, engender comes from the Latin verb generare, meaning “to generate” or “to beget,” and when the word was first used in the 14th century, engender meant “propagate” or “procreate.” That literal meaning having to do with creating offspring (which generate shared when it was adopted in the early 16th century) was soon joined by the “to cause to exist or develop, to produce” meaning most familiar to us today. Generare didn’t just engender generate and engender; regenerate, degenerate, and generation have the same Latin root. As you might suspect, the list of engender relatives does not end there. Generare comes from the Latin noun genus, meaning “origin” or “kind.” From this source we took our own word genus, plus gender, general, and generic, among other words.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 3, 2026 is:





engender • \in-JEN-der\ • verb

Engender is a formal word that means “to be the source or cause of something.”

// Our monthly book club meetings started as a way to connect and ended up being a great place to engender unity and build life-long friendships.

See the entry >





Examples:

“... ‘During a moment defined by anti-intellectualism, escapism, and AI tools that let you skip cognitive work entirely ... intellectual creators are doing something kinda countercultural,’ says Death To Stock’s culture researcher Agus Panzoni. These influencers, who have already built established communities around intellectual pursuits, hold greater meaning and engender more trust ...” — Markiel Magsalin, Vogue, 15 April 2026





Did you know?

A good paragraph about engender will engender understanding in the reader. Like its synonym generate, engender comes from the Latin verb generare, meaning “to generate” or “to beget,” and when the word was first used in the 14th century, engender meant “propagate” or “procreate.” That literal meaning having to do with creating offspring (which generate shared when it was adopted in the early 16th century) was soon joined by the “to cause to exist or develop, to produce” meaning most familiar to us today. Generare didn’t just engender generate and engender; regenerate, degenerate, and generation have the same Latin root. As you might suspect, the list of engender relatives does not end there. Generare comes from the Latin noun genus, meaning “origin” or “kind.” From this source we took our own word genus, plus gender, general, and generic, among other words.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 2, 2026 is:





crux • \KRUKS\ • noun

Crux refers to the most important part of something (such as a problem, issue, or puzzle). It is often used in the phrase "the crux of."

// The crux of the problem is that the project's budget is totally inadequate.

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Examples:

"The new trees number in the thousands. ... What will become of this nursery in the wild in the next hundred years, or thousand, is the crux of a scientific and policy dispute. Starkly different visions of how the grove will recover in the long run have implications on how forest managers should act today." — Doug Smith, The Los Angeles Times, 15 Mar. 2026





Did you know?

Latin speakers used crux to refer literally to an instrument of torture, often a cross or stake, and figuratively to the torture and misery inflicted by means of such an instrument. When English speakers adopted crux in the early 18th century, they used it to mean "a puzzling or difficult problem." In the late 19th century, crux developed a more specific use referring to an essential point of a legal case that required resolution before the case as a whole could be resolved. Today, the verdict on crux is that it can be used to refer to any important part of a problem or argument, inside or outside of the courtroom.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 1, 2026 is:





palatable • \PAL-uh-tuh-bul\ • adjective

Palatable describes something that has a pleasant or agreeable taste, or that is pleasant or acceptable to someone.

// Our group was pleasantly surprised that the food options at the local fair were actually palatable this year.

// Given the traffic downtown, traveling by train is a palatable alternative to driving.

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Examples:

“[Toni] Morrison’s work was not meant to be a palatable salve. Instead, surprise and provocation are the ingredients of her fiction.” — Edna Bonhomme, The New Republic, 6 Mar. 2026





Did you know?

It may be a coincidence that you can’t spell the word palatable without all of the letters in plate (the two words are etymologically unrelated), but this fact may help you remember that palatable is synonymous with a host of words that can describe an enjoyable meal, from tasty to toothsome. Alternatively, you could just stick your finger in your mouth and touch the roof of your mouth, aka your palate. As the palate was once considered the seat of one’s sense of taste, so the word palate eventually came to refer to both a literal and figurative sense of taste (as in “architecture too ornate for my palate”). The adjective palatable arose from palate (via the now-rare verb palate defined in our Unabridged dictionary as “to taste or relish”) in the 17th century, and functions similarly. Seasonings from adobo to za’atar make food more palatable, certainly, but ideas and advice can be made more palatable, too. As a wise woman once sang, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.