Word of the Day
Learn a new word every day! The Dictionary.com team of language experts carefully selects each Word of the Day to add some panache to your vocabulary.
verb
to dress or adorn in a showy, gaudy, or tasteless manner.
Explanation
- First recorded in 1655–65.
- Formed from the verb dizen, "to deck with clothes or finery."
- Dizen was originally a weaving term that refers to a bunch of wool fiber on a distaff, a spinning wheel attachment.
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- The attendees had bedizened themselves for the midnight release of the new fantasy film.
- The children loved to use their parents' old costume jewelry to bedizen themselves.
noun
one of an Alaskan breed of large dogs having a dense, coarse coat, raised originally by the Inuit for drawing sleds.
Explanation
- First recorded in 1895–1900.
- Sometimes capitalized, malamute is from the Inupiaq word malimiut.
- Malimiut is a name for the local groups of Inupiaq peoples of the Kotzebue Sound region in what is now Western Alaska, who bred such dogs.
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- The dog was a beautiful mix of German Shepherd, Siberian Husky, and Alaskan Malamute.
- Bursting through the screen door, the malamute sprinted to greet us as we came up the walkway.
noun
an umbrella.
Explanation
- First recorded in 1895–1900.
- The stem, bumber-, is a facetious alteration of umbrella
- The -shoot element is a respelling of the -chute element in parachute.
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- The sudden rain shower caught her off guard, so she reached for her trusty bumbershoot.
- The old man chuckled as he twirled his colorful bumbershoot on a sunny day.
noun
a playful imitation of language consisting of invented, meaningless words; nonsense; gibberish.
Explanation
- Coined by Lewis Carroll in "Jabberwocky," a poem in Through the Looking Glass (1871).
- Explained by Carroll to mean “the result of much excited and voluble discussion.”
- Formed from jabber and the Old English word wocer or wocor, “offspring, fruit.”
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- The children filled the playground with their delightful jabberwocky, creating a language only they could understand.
- In her dreams, she often found herself wandering through a surreal landscape where creatures spoke in intricate jabberwocky.
adjective
sweetly or smoothly flowing; sweet-sounding.
Explanation
- First recorded in 1375–1425.
- Comes via Middle English from Late Latin mellifluus, which combines the stem of mel “honey” and -flu(ere) “to flow.”
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- The mellifluous melody of the song filled the room, captivating everyone who listened.
- The poet's mellifluous verses painted a vivid and enchanting picture in the reader's mind.
