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.
the white of an egg
Glair is the white of an egg. Fancy chefs and home cooks alike have whipped glair into royal icing, meringues, and even old-school cocktails for centuries. It shares roots with other words like "clear," so stay true to etymological history, look out for yolks and shells, and keep your glair as clear as possible.
to distort or take misleading quotations from
Garble means "to distort or take misleading quotations from." It descends from a medieval spice-sorting term, borrowed from Arabic garbala, "to sift," that eventually shifted from separating peppercorns to mixing up messages. Don't get things tangled up!
insignificantly small or sparse
Scrabbly can describe vegetation that's patchy, rough, and thin, like those scruffy tufts of green hanging on for dear life in stony soil. It comes from a Dutch word meaning "scrape." But I bet my fellow word lovers are more interested in knowing whether scrabbly is somehow connected to a certain board game. The answer is yes, but that's a story for another day.
to brag
Bukh is a word for talking big or bragging when you just can't keep the humble in check. It swaggered into English from a Hindi word meaning "talk," picked up during the days of the British Raj. Why brag about your big vocabulary when you can bukh instead?
inclined or eager to fight
Ready to rumble? Pugilistic means "inclined to fight." Fittingly, the word comes from a Latin term for "boxer," and it's been bobbing and weaving through English since the 1700s. Keep your guard up today and land those knockout ideas.
