Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 10, 2008 is:

posse • \PAH-see\  • noun
*1 : a large group often with a common interest 2 : a body of persons summoned by a sheriff to assist in preserving the public peace usually in an emergency 3 : a group of people temporarily organized to make a search (as for a lost child) 4 : one’s attendants or associates

Example sentence:
"On the Saturday morning we used to watch anxiously for the usual signs of activity and when we saw a large barrel of beer being escorted up the streets by a posse of small boys, we knew that all was well." (Edmund Barber, Country Life, October 12, 1951)

Did you know?
"Posse" started out as a technical term in law, part of the term "posse comitatus," which in Medieval Latin meant "power or authority of the county." As such, it referred to a group of citizens summoned by a sheriff to preserve the public peace as allowed for by law. "Preserving the public peace" so often meant hunting down a supposed criminal that "posse" eventually came to mean any group organized to make a search or embark on a mission. In even broader use it can refer to any group, period. Sometimes nowadays that group is a gang or a rock band but it can as easily be any group -- of politicians, models, architects, tourists, children, or what have you -- acting in concert.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 09, 2008 is:

indagate • \IN-duh-gayt\  • verb
: to search into : investigate

Example sentence:
The defense attorneys requested an adjournment so that they could fully indagate the new evidence.

Did you know?
A close examination of "indagate" reveals that it's a rather uncommon word. If we delve into the past, we discover that it first appeared in an English dictionary in 1623. Probing further, we see that its synonym "investigate" was already a hundred years old at the time. Despite the fact that our search turns up the derivatives "indagation," "indagator," "indagatory," and "indagative," we see that none of these words was ever used as widely as "investigation," "investigator," "investigatory," and "investigative." If we hunt for the etymology of "indagate," we sniff out the Latin verb "indagare" ("to track"), which often referred, as did Latin "investigare," specifically to tracking done by hunting dogs.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 08, 2008 is:

glom • \GLAHM\  • verb
*1 : take, steal 2 : seize, catch

Example sentence:
“She signed an affidavit of confession attesting she glommed more than $284,000, the company contends.” (Frank Donnelly, Staten Island Advance, September 15, 2008)

Did you know?
It's a classic case of glomming: Americans seized on "glaum" (a term from Scots dialect that basically means "grab") and appropriated it as our own, changing it to "glom" in the process. "Glom" first meant "steal" (as in the purse-snatching, robber kind of stealing), but over time that meaning got stretched. Today, "glom" often figuratively extends that original "steal" sense. A busy professional might glom a weekend getaway, for example. "Glom" also appears frequently in the phrase "glom on to," which can mean "to appropriate for one's own use" ("glom on to another's idea"); "to grab hold of" ("glom on to the last cookie"); or "to latch on to" ("glom on to an opinion" or "glom on to an influential friend").

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 07, 2008 is:

puissant • \PWISS-unt\  • adj
: of great force or vigor : strong, powerful

Example sentence:
Laurie was aware of the restaurant critic's puissant influence in the industry, so she became quite nervous when she spotted him sitting at a table in her café.

Did you know?
"Puissant" has some powerful ties to some more commonplace English words. Although "puissant" has a considerably fancier feel than "power" and "potent," all three words share the same Latin ancestor: "posse," a verb meaning "to be able." "Power" came to us by way of Anglo-French "poer," which is itself thought to have come from "potēre," a Vulgar Latin alteration of "posse." "Potent" came from "potent-, potens," a present participle of "posse." From "poer" came the adjective "pussant," meaning "able" or "powerful" in Anglo-French, and English speakers borrowed that to form "puissant" in the 15th century.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 06, 2008 is:

agrarian • \uh-GRAIR-ee-un\  • adjective
1 : of or relating to fields or lands or their tenure 2 *a : of, relating to, or characteristic of farmers or their way of lifeb : organized or designed to promote agricultural interests

Example sentence:
Since buying their organic farm three years ago, Ken and Sheila have been gradually adjusting to an agrarian lifestyle.

Did you know?
Today, an acre is generally considered to be a unit of land measuring 43,560 square feet (4,047 square meters). Before that standard was set, it's believed that an acre represented a rougher measurement -- the amount of land that could be plowed in one day with a yoke of oxen. Both "acre" and today's word, "agrarian," derive from the Latin noun "ager" and the Greek noun "agros," meaning "field." (You can probably guess that "agriculture" is another descendant.) "Agrarian," first used in English in the 17th century, describes things pertaining to the cultivation of fields, as well as the farmers who cultivate them.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 05, 2008 is:

cumshaw • \KUM-shaw\  • noun
: present, gratuity; also : bribe, payoff

Example sentence:
"I never heard her ask for any cumshaw that weighed less than a ton and which required fewer than a dozen enlisted men and two trucks to move." (James A. Michener, Los Angeles Times, October 19, 1986)

Did you know?
It was probably British Navy personnel who first picked up "cumshaw" in Chinese ports, during the First Opium War of 1839–42. "Cumshaw" is from a word that means "grateful thanks" in the dialect of Xiamen, a port in southeast China. Apparently, sailors heard it from the beggars who hung around the ports, and mistook it as the word for a handout. Since then, U.S. sailors have given "cumshaw" its own unique application, for something obtained through unofficial means (whether deviously or simply ingeniously). Outside of naval circles, meanings of "cumshaw" range from a harmless gratuity or gift to bending the rules a little to outright bribery.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 04, 2008 is:

kundalini • \koon-duh-LEE-nee (the "oo" is as in "book")\  • noun, often capitalized
: the yogic life force that is held to lie coiled at the base of the spine until it is aroused and sent to the head to trigger enlightenment

Example sentence:
In her yoga class, Susan is learning the breaths for awakening kundalini.

Did you know?
"Kundalinī" is the feminine form of the Sanskrit adjective meaning "circular" or "coiled." In yoga, the word applies to the life force that lies like a coiled serpent at the base of the spine and that can be sent along the spine to the head through prescribed postures and exercises. On the way, the kundalini passes through six chakras, or points of physical or spiritual energy in the human body. At the seventh chakra, the yogi is said to experience enlightenment.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 03, 2008 is:

red herring • \RED-HERR-ing\  • noun
1 : a herring cured by salting and slow smoking to a dark brown color *2 : something that distracts attention from the real issue

Example sentence:
The editorial asserts that the hoopla over the proposed new convention center is a red herring, deflecting attention from the mayor's failure to resolve the budgetary crisis.

Did you know?
Believe it or not, "red herring" has as much to do with hunting dogs as with brightly colored fish. Here's how: A herring is a soft-finned bony fish. People who like to eat herring have long preserved them by salting and slowly smoking them. That process makes a herring turn red or dark brown -- and gives them a very strong smell. Dogs love to sniff such smelly treats, a fact that makes the fish a perfect diversion for anyone trying to distract hunting dogs from the trail of their quarry. The practice of using preserved fish to confuse hunting dogs led to the use of the term "red herring" for anything that diverts attention from the issue at hand.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 02, 2008 is:

quondam • \KWAHN-dum\  • adj
: former, sometime

Example sentence:
A quondam rodeo champ, circuit preacher, and peanut farmer, Baxter has settled into his new life as a stand-up comedian.

Did you know?
Looking for an unusual and creative way to say "former"? "Quondam" (which came to English in the 16th century from Latin quondam, meaning "at one time" or "formerly") certainly fits the bill. Or maybe you'd prefer one of its synonyms: "whilom," "ci-devant" or "preterit." Or you could really go crazy with "umquhile," a word that is extremely rare even in its more natural Scots English setting. "Quondam" itself isn't exactly ubiquitous, but it's used more than any of the other words above. If you're looking for something a bit more pedestrian, you might try yet another synonym: "erstwhile." Despite its wonderfully archaic flavor, "erstwhile" is a highly favored alternative.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 01, 2008 is:

fifth column • \FIFTH-KAH-lum\  • noun
: a group of secret sympathizers or supporters of an enemy that engage in espionage or sabotage within defense lines or national borders

Example sentence:
In the 1950s the Communist Party was denounced in the United States as a fifth column, and many people were unjustly blacklisted as Communist sympathizers.

Did you know?
"Fifth column," a translation of the Spanish "quinta columna," was inspired by a boast by rebel general Emilio Mola during the Spanish Civil War. Mola predicted Madrid would fall as four columns of rebel troops approaching the city were joined by another hidden column of sympathizers within it. In an October 1936 article in The New York Times, William Carney described those secret rebel supporters as the "fifth column," and English speakers seized upon the term. It gained widespread popularity after Ernest Hemingway used it in the title of a 1938 book, and it was often applied (along with derivative forms such as "fifth columnism" and "fifth columnist") to Nazi supporters within foreign nations during World War II.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 30, 2008 is:

theriac • \THEER-ee-ak\  • noun
1 : a mixture of many drugs and honey formerly held to be an antidote to poison *2 : cure-all

Example sentence:
"Chicken soup may not really be a theriac," said Helen, sniffling between spoonfuls, "but there certainly is something comforting about eating it when you're feeling sick."

Did you know?
There really is no such thing as a single remedy for all that ails us. But that hasn't kept English speakers from creating, not just a single word, but several words, that mean "cure-all": "catholicon," "elixir," "nostrum," "panacea," and today's word, "theriac." When we first used "theriac," it meant "an antidote for poison" -- for any and all poisons, that is. That's how our Roman and Greek forebears used their "theriaca" and "thēriake," which derive ultimately from the Greek word for "wild animal." The first theriac was supposedly created by the first-century Greek physician Andromachus, whose concoction consisted of some 70 drugs pulverized with honey. Medieval physicians created even more elaborate theriacs to dose a plague-dreading populace, for whom the possibility of a cure-all didn't seem too wild a notion at all.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.