Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

eschew • \ess-CHOO\ • verb To eschew something is to avoid it, especially because you do not think it is right, proper, or practical. // Their teacher was known as a Luddite because he eschewed the use of smartphones and tablets in the classroom. See the entry > Examples: “Scheduled work shifts [at Burning Man] were delayed and continually rearranged, causing confusion among campers as to how and when to contribute.... While some of us found ways to help, others took it as an opportunity to eschew their responsibilities. However, those of us who showed up united, and handled business, did so with aplomb...” — Morena Duwe, The Los Angeles Times, 9 Sept. 2024 Did you know? Something to chew on: there’s no etymological relationship between the verbs chew and eschew. While the former comes from the Old English word cēowan, eschew comes instead from the Anglo-French verb eschiver and shares roots with the Old High German verb sciuhen, meaning “to frighten off.” In his famous dictionary of 1755, Samuel Johnson characterized eschew as “almost obsolete.” History has proven that the great lexicographer was wrong on that call, however. Today, following a boom in the word’s usage during the 19th and 20th centuries, English speakers and writers use eschew when something is avoided less for temperamental reasons than for moral or practical ones, even if misguidedly so, as when Barry Lopez wrote in his 2019 book Horizon of ill-fated Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, “with an attitude of cultural superiority, eschewing sled dogs for Manchurian ponies....”

complaisant • \kum-PLAY-sunt\ • adjective Someone described as complaisant is willing or eager to please other people, or is easily convinced to do what other people want. // Derek was a complaisant boy, always happy to oblige whenever his mother or father asked him to run an errand. // She was too complaisant to say no to her sister's demands. See the entry > Examples: “Last month Ferrari lofted its banners over a resort near the southern port of Cagliari and invited journalists to test-drive the new Ferrari Roma Spider, taking advantage of the excellent tarmac, ideal weather and complaisant authorities.” — Dan Neil, The Wall Street Journal, 5 Oct. 2023 Did you know? Complaisant and complacent are often confused, and for good reason. Not only do the words look and sound alike, but they also both come from Latin verb complacēre, meaning “to please greatly.” (The placēre in complacēre is an ancestor of the English word please). Complacent is used disapprovingly to describe someone who is self-satisfied or unconcerned with whatever is going on, but it also shares with complaisant the sense of “inclined to please or oblige.” This sense of complacent is an old one, but that hasn’t kept language critics from labeling its use as an error—and on the whole, modern writers do prefer complaisant for this meaning. Whether you complaisantly oblige, well, that’s up to you.

scintilla • \sin-TIL-uh\ • noun A scintilla is a very small amount of something. Scintilla is usually used in negative statements, as in “not even/nary a scintilla.” // There wasn’t even a scintilla of evidence to support their story. See the entry > Examples: “… there was one part of his Irish childhood that would follow [Oscar] Wilde across the sea to England. A tiny part of his childhood, admittedly. The merest scintilla of his youth.” — Alexander Poots, The Strangers’ House: Writing Northern Ireland, 2023 Did you know? Wonder what scintillas (or scintillae) are? It may help spark your memory to look up above the world so high at the tiny (to our eyes) stars twinkling like diamonds in the sky. Scintilla comes directly from Latin, where it refers to a spark—that is, a bright flash such as you might see from a burning ember (the noun scintilla is related to the verb scintillare, which means “to sparkle” and is responsible for the English verb scintillate meaning “to sparkle or gleam”). In the 17th century, English carried over this “glittering particle” sense, which is still in use today, as when Scottish writer Rudi Zygadlo wrote of the Gulf of Mexico “fizzing with scintillas underneath the rising sun.” In the same century, people also began using scintilla figuratively for a hint or trace of something that barely suggests its presence. Today this sense is much more common, and especially found in negative statements, such as “We have not a scintilla of doubt that you are now humming ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’”

frugal • \FROO-gul\ • adjective Someone described as frugal is careful about spending money or using things unnecessarily. Frugal can also describe something that is simple and plain in a way that reflects such carefulness with money and resources. // By being frugal and limiting unnecessary purchases, the family is able to stretch its monthly budget. // Sometimes a frugal meal of bread, cheese, and grapes can be just as satisfying as a lavish feast. See the entry > Examples: “‘I would take anything that I had and put it into a pan and just fry it up, and then eat it with a fork out of the pan, because it would also cut down on the minimum amount of dishes for me to have to clean,’ he [Kevin Bacon] recalls of some of his early egg-onion-leftover-pasta concoctions. And though his frugal days are behind him, the star still prefers cooking over fancy restaurant meals most of the time.” — Clarissa Cruz, People, 9 Nov. 2023 Did you know? Folks who are frugal tend to frown on the frivolous frittering away of the fruits of their labor, so it may surprise you to learn that frugal comes from the Latin word frūx, which means, among other things, “fruit.” Perhaps because of fruit’s financial value, from frūx followed frūgī, an adjective meaning “deserving, sober, or thrifty,” which finagled its way into Late Latin in the form of frūgālis (“not given to excess; temperate, sober, simple”), then Middle French, and finally English, as the familiar frugal. Today, frugal is used to describe things that reflect a fastidious dedication to foregoing the fancy, as in “he insists on a frugal diet of fungi and fava beans.” Frugal can also describe a person, usually with respect to money, but one can be frugal with other things, too, such as words that start with the letter f, though we certainly haven’t been in this paragraph.

obfuscate • \AHB-fuh-skayt\ • verb To obfuscate something is to make it more difficult to understand. Obfuscate can also mean “to be evasive, unclear, or confusing.” // The revised wording of the rule obfuscates its meaning. // They allege that the company’s representative lied and obfuscated when answering questions about the report. See the entry > Examples: “‘I firmly believe that cyber-insecurity is fundamentally a policy problem,’ says Brett Callow, a threat analyst at the security firm Emsisoft. ‘We need standardized and uniform disclosure and reporting laws, prescribed language for those disclosures and reports, regulation and licensing of negotiators. Far too much happens in the shadows or is obfuscated by weasel words. It’s counterproductive and helps only the cybercriminals.’” — Lily Hay Newman, WIRED, 5 Dec. 2023 Did you know? “Hello darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again.” So begins the classic 1960s Simon and Garfunkel song “The Sound of Silence,” which was written by Paul Simon with a seemingly oxymoronic title that has obfuscated—that is, confused—ten thousand people, maybe more (probably a lot more) in the decades since. It confuses us too, but we’re not above being oxymoronic ourselves when we say that darkness, our old friend, shines a helpful light on the meaning of the word obfuscate. When obfuscate first came into use in the early 16th century, it was with the meaning “to throw into shadow.” This makes sense, since the word comes from the Latin obfuscāre (“to obscure or darken”) which itself comes in part from fuscus (“dark-colored”). The word was used for both figurative and literal darkening before developing the even more figurative senses of “to make more difficult to understand,” “to be evasive or unclear,” and “to confuse,” which in modern use are now more common.

victuals • \VIT-ulz\ • noun plural Victuals is a word with an old-fashioned feel that refers to food, and sometimes to both food and drink. // Rachel’s grandparents’ larder was full of canned tomatoes and peaches, jars of pickled beans, jugs of dandelion wine, and other time-honored victuals. See the entry > Examples: “May in Atlanta brings refreshing cocktails, meals on the patio and Cinco de Mayo festivities. The holiday, which celebrates the Mexican army’s victory over France at the 1862 Battle of Puebla, offers the perfect occasion to appreciate Mexican-American culture and all the great victuals associated with it.” — Olivia Wakim, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 22 Apr. 2024 Did you know? In the introduction to her 2016 cookbook Victuals, writer Ronni Lundy remarks on the (to some) unusual divergence between how her book’s title is spelled and how it is pronounced: “Say it the way my people have for centuries: vidls. ... Maybe you thought saying it that way was wrong. But look up that word in your dictionary. It turns out my people, the people of the southern Appalachian Mountains, have been right about victuals all along.” Indeed, they have! Victuals refers to supplies of usually prepared foods (rather than raw ingredients) and comes from the Late Latin word victualia meaning “provisions,” and ultimately from Latin vivere, “to live.” It went through French before it came into English, and the pronunciation VIT-ulz was presumably established based on the French spelling vitaille before the spelling was changed to better reflect the Latin root of the word. Victuals would be spelled “vittles” if its pronunciation dictated its form, and vittles is in fact given in our dictionaries as a variant of victuals, though the spelling is used mostly playfully to evoke the supposed language of cowboys as depicted in movies, etc.

guttural • \GUTT-uh-rul\ • adjective A guttural sound—such as speech, laughter, or a grunt—is formed or pronounced in the throat. // Her friends always found her deep, guttural laugh to be highly contagious. See the entry > Examples: “Mantled howler monkeys are one of the largest primates in Mexico and Central America, measuring around 25 inches on average. Covered in thick black fur, they are known for their low, guttural calls.” — Manuela Andreoni, The New York Times, 22 May 2024 Did you know? Get your mind out of the gutter. Despite appearances, guttural is not related to the English word gutter; that word comes ultimately from the Latin verb gutta, meaning “drop,” while guttural has a different Latin root: the noun guttur, meaning “throat.” Since the late 1500s guttural has been used to describe sounds that are formed or pronounced in the throat, from cries and sobs to howls and grunts. A second sense, describing sounds or utterances which strike the listener as harsh or disagreeable (as in “the guttural roar of a motorcycle engine disturbed the afternoon’s quiet”) followed. A new sense appears to be developing as well, describing things that are instinctively or deeply felt irrespective of grunts or noises from the throat, as in “a guttural response/reaction,” but this sense has yet to meet the criteria for inclusion in our dictionary.

eddy • \EDD-ee\ • noun An eddy is a current of water or air running contrary to the main current, especially as a whirlpool. In figurative use, eddy may also refer to a contrary or circular current of thought or policy. // The strong gusts whipped up eddies of fallen leaves. // They were caught up in the eddies of chaos. See the entry > Examples: "These adventures were avenues to experience nature, the way a river current bends around rocks to form strings of rapids and eddies, the way snow blankets the land in a brisk silence. I made note of these observations. As I explored the landscape, I also began to explore its stories." — Teow Lim Goh, LitHub.com, 1 Nov. 2022 Did you know? "He walked by the stream, far from the houses, and in the light and warmth of the sun fell asleep on the bank. When he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and carried it on to the sea." This use of eddy (from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens) reflects a sense that has been swirling around English for centuries; the earliest documented uses of eddy to refer to water currents goes back to the 1400s. Etymologists trace the word to the Scottish dialect term ydy, which had the same basic meaning as our modern term. The verb form of eddy meaning "to move in or cause to move in an eddy or in the manner of an eddy" (as in "the waves eddied against the pier") appeared a few centuries after the noun.

chastise • \chass-TYZE\ • verb To chastise someone is to criticize them harshly for doing something wrong. // The waiter was chastised for forgetting the customer’s order. See the entry > Examples: “… what I’m saying is that we must acknowledge that hypocrisy exists all around us and not jump to chastise and blame someone every time we encounter an example of it. If we rush to judge and shame someone each time we see hypocrisy, we risk hindering progress in solving some of our biggest problems.” — Stephanie Dillon, Rolling Stone, 5 Apr. 2024 Did you know? If you want to understand the meaning of chastise (which comes from the Anglo-French verb castier, meaning “to discipline”), you could do worse than to turn to popular music. Pop, rap, jazz, rock, country—there’s not a single genre that isn’t full of songs penned from the point of view of jilted and/or cheated lovers chastising—that is, harshly criticizing—the one who did them wrong. Nearly every song on Beyoncé’s 2016 album Lemonade, for example, is a master class in chastisement (chastisement being, of course, the noun form of chastise), featuring such lyrics as “What a wicked way to treat the girl that loves you” and “Ten times out of nine, I know you’re lying.” Chastise itself pops up in lyrics occasionally, too, as sung by artists including Guns N’ Roses (“So don’t chastise me or think I mean you harm”), Dr. Dre (“Fool, you better recognize / Death Row came to chastise”), and Janet Jackson (“Control and chastise / An instrument of punishment / Like a whip”). Jackson’s use is notable in particular for representing the word’s oldest sense, less common but still in use, of “to inflict punishment on (as with a whip).”

lenient • \LEEN-yunt\ • adjective Someone or something described as lenient is not harsh, severe, or strict. In other words, they allow a lot of freedom and leeway, and do not punish or correct in a strong way. // The teacher was lenient in her grading after the holiday break. // Some concerned citizens felt the punishment was too lenient. See the entry > Examples: “In the adult section of the library, the patrons arrived generally by themselves. … If they did something as human as nodding off, they would be kicked out immediately. … The children’s section was a little more lenient when it came to rules. A child would be splayed on the floor staring at the ceiling with their mittens and boots lying around them as though they were pieces of them that had broken off. There were children playing Battleship. There would be a child sitting in a chair shaped like a giant hand, reading up on the increasingly absurdly horrific circumstances of orphans while eating a box of Goldfish crackers.” — Heather O’Neill, “Lite-Brite Times Square,” Good Mom on Paper: Writers on Creativity and Motherhood, 2022 Did you know? If you’ve ever had a peaceful, easy feeling—perhaps brought on by someone who you know won’t let you down—then you’ll have no problem understanding the earliest meaning of lenient. When it entered English in the mid-1600s, lenient described something soothing—such as a medication—that relieved pain or stress, or otherwise enabled someone to take it easy. For a brief window of time it was even used as a noun, referring to any of various ointments and balms that help heal wounds in the long run. Lenient comes from the Latin verb lenire, meaning “to soften or soothe,” which in turn comes from the adjective lenis, meaning “soft or mild.” The “soothing or easing” sense of lenient is still in use today, but English speakers are more likely to apply it to someone who is lax with the rules (as in “a lenient professor”), who doesn’t mind when someone acts like a certain kind of fool or takes it to the limit one more time.

negotiate • \nih-GOH-shee-ayt\ • verb To negotiate is to discuss something formally in order to make an agreement. Negotiate can also mean, when applied to people or things in motion, "to get through, around, or over successfully." // The parties negotiated an agreement. // The trail is designed for an experienced skier who can negotiate unpredictable terrain. See the entry > Examples: "Once in relationships, millennials are keen to protect their personal interests—a change reflected in their embrace of prenuptial agreements, the unprecedentedly high rates at which they maintain separate bank accounts, and even in the way they negotiate domestic affairs and disputes." — Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice, 2024 Did you know? Negotiate found its way into the English language from the Latin verb negōtiārī, meaning "to do business, trade, or deal." Since its arrival, this word has developed a variety of applications. The "doing business" sense is still going strong: in addition to its most common use in situations where formal decisions (such as a price to be paid) are made by way of discussion, negotiate is also used to talk about the transfer or conversion of money, as in the phrase "negotiate a check." Negotiate has applications outside of commerce, too; it is sometimes used to mean "to successfully travel along or over," as when a cyclist is said to "negotiate mountainous terrain."

paroxysm • \PAIR-uk-sih-zum\ • noun Paroxysm is a formal word that refers to a sudden strong feeling or uncontrollable expression of emotion. In medical use, paroxysm refers to a sudden attack or increase of symptoms of a disease that often occurs repeatedly. // The comedy special sent us into paroxysms of laughter. See the entry > Examples: "[Danny] Ray was part of [James] Brown's cape routine for 45 years, assisting him on the song 'Please, Please, Please.' The Godfather of Soul would collapse in a paroxysm of feigned grief during the song, being led away by a solicitous Ray, who draped the singer in a cape. Brown would take a few steps, then return to the microphone. Sometimes, they eschewed the cape, and Brown was merely led away." — Bruce Haring, Deadline, 3 Feb. 2021 Did you know? Paroxysm didn't just burst onto the scene recently; its roots go back to ancient Greek. The word ultimately erupted from the Greek verb paroxynein, which means "to stimulate." (Oxynein, a parent of paroxynein, means "to provoke" and comes from oxys, a Greek word for "sharp.") In its earliest known English uses in the 15th century, paroxysm referred to a sudden attack or increase of symptoms of a disease—such as pain, coughing, shaking, etc.—that often occur again and again. This sense is still in use, but paroxysm soon took on a broader and now much more common sense referring to an outburst, especially a dramatic physical or emotional one, as in "paroxysms of rage/laughter/joy/delight/guilt."

tenacious • \tuh-NAY-shus\ • adjective Something described as tenacious cannot easily be stopped or pulled apart; in other words, it is firm or strong. Tenacious can also describe something—such as a myth—that continues or persists for a long time, or someone who is determined to do something. // Caleb was surprised by the crab’s tenacious grip. // Once Linda has decided on a course of action, she can be very tenacious when it comes to seeing it through. See the entry > Examples: "I put up a nesting box three years ago and nailed it to an oak tree. Beth and Fiona told me the next box location was ideal: seven feet up, out of view of walkways, and within three feet of the lower branches of a tenacious old fuchsia tree." — Amy Tan, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, 2024 Did you know? For the more than 400 years that tenacious has been a part of the English language, it has adhered closely to its Latin antecedent: tenāx, an adjective meaning "holding fast," "clinging," or "persistent." Almost from the first, tenacious could suggest either literal adhesion or figurative stick-to-itiveness. Sandburs are tenacious, and so are athletes who don't let defeat get them down. We use tenacious of a good memory, too—one that has a better than average capacity to hold information. But you can also have too much of a good thing: the addition in Latin of the prefix per- ("thoroughly") to tenāx led to the English word pertinacious, meaning "perversely persistent." You might use pertinacious for the likes of rumors and spam calls, for example.

snivel • \SNIV-ul\ • verb To snivel is to speak or act in a whining, sniffling, tearful, or weakly emotional manner. The word snivel may also be used to mean "to run at the nose," "to snuffle," or "to cry or whine with snuffling." // She was unmoved by the millionaires sniveling about their financial problems. // My partner sniveled into the phone, describing the frustrations of the day. See the entry > Examples: "At first, he ran a highway stop with video gambling. 'To sit and do nothing for 10 to 12 hours drove me nuts,' he [Frank Nicolette] said. That's when he found art. 'I started making little faces, and they were selling so fast, I'll put pants and shirts on these guys,' he said, referring to his hand-carved sculptures. 'Then (people) whined and sniveled and wanted bears, and so I started carving some bears.'" — Benjamin Simon, The Post & Courier (Charleston, South Carolina), 5 Oct. 2024 Did you know? There's never been anything pretty about sniveling. Snivel, which originally meant simply "to have a runny nose," has an Old English ancestor whose probable form was snyflan. Its lineage includes some other charming words of yore: an Old English word for mucus, snofl; the Middle Dutch word for a head cold, snof; the Old Norse word for snout, which is snoppa; and nan, a Greek verb meaning "to flow." Nowadays, we mostly use snivel as we have since the 1600s: when self-pitying whining is afoot, whether or not such sniveling is accompanied by unchecked nasal flow.

moot • \MOOT\ • adjective Moot typically describes something that is no longer important or worth discussing. It can also describe something that is argued about but not possible for people to prove. // I think they were wrong, but the point is moot. Their decision has been made and it can't be changed now. // Perhaps they should have foreseen the effects of the change, but that point is moot. See the entry > Examples: "Before the game, there were a few nerves, to be sure. People worried what a second straight loss would mean, about the team having to return to Dallas deflated and without momentum. Those concerns turned out to be moot, with a largely stress-free second half as the Celtics' lead ballooned to more than 20 points in the third quarter as the team never looked back." — Danny McDonald, et al., The Boston Globe, 18 June 2024 Did you know? To describe an argument as "moot" is to say that there's no point in discussing it further. In other words, a moot argument is one that has no practical or useful significance and is fit only for theoretical consideration, as in a classroom. It's no surprise, then, that the roots of moot are entwined with academia. The adjective moot followed a few centuries behind the noun moot, which comes from mōt, an Old English word meaning "assembly." Originally, moot referred to an Anglo-Saxon deliberative assembly that met primarily for the administration of justice. By the 16th century, functioning judicial moots had diminished, the only remnant being moot courts, academic mock courts in which law students could try hypothetical cases for practice. The earliest use of moot as an adjective was as a synonym of debatable, but because the cases students tried in moot courts had no bearing on the real world, the word gained the additional sense—used especially in North America—of "deprived of practical significance."

denigrate • \DEN-ih-grayt\ • verb To denigrate someone is to criticize them heavily and often unfairly. Denigrate can also mean "to make something seem less important or valuable." // Her essay denigrates her mentor as a person and as a teacher. // Though initially quick to denigrate the work that had been done, the group quickly realized that those efforts had laid a good foundation for what they themselves hoped to accomplish. See the entry > Examples: "As much as I want to have good taste in books, as much as I want to use that status to sell books that I think make the world a better place … I need to be cognizant of ways people like me have used 'good taste' as an act of cultural authoritarianism to manipulate culture, denigrate creations from other identities, and empower themselves at the expense of others." — Josh Cook, The Art of Libromancy: Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century, 2023 Did you know? The word denigrate has been part of English since the 16th century and can be traced back to the Latin nigrare, meaning "to blacken." When denigrate was first used, it meant "to cast aspersions on someone's character or reputation." Eventually, it developed a second sense of "to make black" ("factory smoke denigrated the sky"), representing an interesting case of a literal sense (now rare) following a figurative one. Nowadays, you’re most likely to hear denigrate used as a synonym of defame or belittle.

grandiloquence • \gran-DIH-luh-kwunss\ • noun Grandiloquence is a formal word that refers to the use of extravagantly colorful or pompous language often in order to sound impressive and important. // He was known for the flowery grandiloquence of his speeches which, his passionate delivery notwithstanding, always caused more than a few listeners to doze off. See the entry > Examples: “The novel, a melodramatic saga of social climbing and doomed romance, is a deliberate anachronism in both its themes and its style. Its Belle Époque setting, sweeping cast of characters, frequent asides to the reader, and grandiloquence place it firmly in the tradition of the nineteenth-century novel. It is not concerned with truth but with lies: glittering surfaces, concealed identities, and foolish pretensions.” — Jess Bergman, The New Yorker, 8 Nov. 2023 Did you know? Grandiloquence is a word for highfalutin speech that itself has somewhat of a highfalutin ring. It’s one of several English words related to speech that come from the Latin verb loqui, meaning “to speak,” including loquacious (“full of excessive talk”), soliloquy (“a long, dramatic monologue”), and, notably, eloquence, which refers to the ability to speak or write well and in an effective or persuasive way. Those who use grandiloquence in their speech or prose could also be described as a bit extra in their attempts at eloquence—the grand in grandiloquence traces back to the Latin adjective grandis meaning “great” or “grand.”

steadfast • \STED-fast\ • adjective Someone described as steadfast is very devoted or loyal to a person, belief, or cause. Steadfast is also used to describe something, such as support, that remains unchanging. // Despite the singer’s recent change in creative direction, his true fans have remained steadfast. // She remained committed to her steadfast belief in nature's ability to heal itself. See the entry > Examples: "Describing the slowness of change is often confused with acceptance of the status quo. It's really the opposite: an argument that the status quo must be changed, and it will take steadfast commitment to see the job through. It's not accepting defeat; it's accepting the terms of possible victory." — Rebecca Solnit, LitHub.com, 11 Jan. 2024 Did you know? Steadfast has held its ground for many centuries. Its Old English predecessor, stedefæst, combines stede, meaning "place," and fæst, meaning "fixed." Steadfast was first used in battle contexts to describe warriors who literally stood their ground, which led to its "immovable" sense, as when Sinclair Lewis wrote of "a castle, steadfast among storms." (The word was also once used to describe steady hands, as well as substances that keep their solid, firm state.) These senses were soon joined by one applied to people's character, implying unswerving faith, loyalty, or devotion; arriving in the 12th century, this meaning has remained steady in the English language ever since.

cachet • \ka-SHAY\ • noun Cachet is used as a synonym of prestige to refer to the respect and admiration someone or something receives for being successful or important. It can also be used to refer to a characteristic feature or quality that confers such prestige. // His research in Antarctica gave him a certain cachet among other scientists. See the entry > Examples: "This 175-year-old real-life castle in Northern Ireland has real historical cachet." — Abby Montanez, Robb Report, 24 Sept. 2024 Did you know? If you're looking for a catchy word to add to your vocabulary, why not give your stamp of approval to cachet? After all, this term is borrowed directly from French, a language which has long held a certain cachet in English (formal- and fancy-sounding English words often have a French pedigree—evidence of the prestige bestowed on the language). In French, cachet—which comes from the Middle French verb cacher meaning "to press"—refers to an official seal pressed into soft wax and used on formal and legal documents. The "seal" sense of cachet has been used in English since the 17th century, and in the 19th century the word started acquiring its extended senses, first referring to a feature or quality conferring prestige, and by century's end to prestige itself.

raddled • \RAD-uld\ • adjective Someone described as raddled is in a confused or befuddled state (as from drinking). Raddled can also describe things that are broken-down or worn. // We were met at the door by a raddled old man who turned out to be the actor’s father, and who in his day had also been an estimable presence on the London stage. // Louisa was delighted to discover a raddled old radio in her grandparents’ attic, even though it didn’t work. See the entry > Examples: “There seems to be very little information out there about Krinkles, the star of a commercial so disturbing its eternal afterlife on the internet is guaranteed: it’s probably all in a heavily guarded facility in Area 51. In the ad, this raddled gentleman pokes his head out of what appears to be a kennel after what was clearly a heavy night, crashes his way through the scenery, then eats some cereal.” — Emma Beddington, The Guardian (London, England), 31 Jan. 2024 Did you know? The origins of raddled are a bit of a riddle, but they may have something to do with rodel, the Middle English precursor to ruddle. Rattled? No need to get red-faced, we’re here to explain. Rodel, like ruddle, refers to red ocher, a red pigment used for (among other things) marking animals, and especially sheep. Etymologists believe that both the noun raddle (also meaning “red ocher”) and verb raddle (“to mark or paint with raddle”) come from a variant of rodel. A raddled sheep is a sheep marked with red dye (as at shearing or breeding time). Over time, the verb raddle was applied more broadly to the reddening of anything, and often to reddening by use (or overuse) of rouge on a person’s face to conceal wrinkles caused by age or exhaustion. To be raddled thusly was not a compliment, and may have led to the “worn out” sense of the adjective raddled. The “confused” sense of raddled is often associated with the influence of alcohol, possibly due to the “reddening” effects of a tipple on one’s visage.