Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 4, 2025 is: frowsy • \FROW-zee\  • adjective Something described as frowsy has a messy or dirty appearance. // The lamp, discovered in a neglected corner of a frowsy antique store, turned out to be quite valuable. See the entry > Examples: “Footage from his early shows is sublime. In one, models with frowsy hair totter along the catwalk in clogs, clutching—for reasons not explained—dead mackerel.” — Jess Cartner-Morley, The Guardian (London), 4 Mar. 2024 Did you know? Despite its meanings suggesting neglect and inattention, frowsy has been kept in steady rotation by English users since the late 1600s. The word (which is also spelled frowzy and has enjoyed other variants over the centuries) first wafted into the language in an olfactory sense describing that which smells fusty and musty—an old factory, perhaps, or “corrupt air from animal substance,” which Benjamin Franklin de