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daily_otter_feedVia Alaska SeaLife Center, which writes:
❗Patient update❗ EL2525 (orphaned female sea otter pup admitted from Homer, name TBD)
In this video, you’ll see a glimpse of what an admit exam looks like for an orphaned pup when they first arrive to the ASLC.
This young female northern sea otter pup arrived at the Alaska SeaLife Center in critical condition after being found alone and emaciated on a beach near Homer on October 20, 2025. Estimated to be less than two months old, she was extremely malnourished, dehydrated, anemic, and too weak to vocalize during her first exam, which immediately concerned our veterinary team.
Since her arrival, our team has been providing intensive, 24-hour treatment to help her stabilize. She is slowly gaining weight and strength, but she continues to face challenges that require close monitoring.
Thank you for caring about these animals the way we do! If you’d like to be part of this pup’s recovery journey, your support truly makes a difference: https://www.alaskasealife.org/donate
merriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 10, 2025 is:
grift • \GRIFT\ • verb
To grift is to use dishonest tricks to illegally take money or property.
// The email scammer shamelessly grifted thousands of dollars from unwitting victims.
Examples:
"When the families demanded he return the jewellery he had grifted from them he arranged meetings and then did not show." — Peter Spriggs, The Echo (South Essex, England), 31 Oct. 2025
Did you know?
Someone who grifts is a thief, but of a particular sort: they illegally obtain money or property by means of cleverness or deceit, and do not usually resort to physical force or violence. A grifter might be a pickpocket, a crooked gambler, a scammer, or a con artist. The most plausible etymology we have for the murky term is that grift is an early 20th century alteration of graft, a slightly older word which refers to the acquisition of money or property in dishonest or questionable ways. Both grift and graft have noun and verb forms.
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Photo by Helen Pinchin, via New Forest Wildlife Park
merriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 9, 2025 is:
paltry • \PAWL-tree\ • adjective
Paltry is a formal word that can describe something that is very small or too small in amount, or something that has little meaning, importance, or worth.
// They're offering a paltry salary for the position.
// The professor announced they'd finally had enough of the students' paltry excuses for being late to class.
Examples:
"When the witty and wry English fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett interviewed Bill Gates for GQ in 1995, only 39% of Americans had access to a home computer. According to the Pew Research Center, the number who were connected to the internet was a paltry 14%." — Ed Simon, LitHub.com, 25 Nov. 2024
Did you know?
Before paltry was an adjective, it was a noun meaning trash. That now-obsolete noun came from palt or pelt, a dialect term referring to a piece of coarse cloth, or more broadly, to trash. The adjective paltry, which dates to the mid-16th century, originally described things considered worthless, or of very low quality, but it's gained a number of meanings over the centuries, none of which are complimentary. A paltry house might be neglected and unfit for occupancy; a paltry trick is a trick that is low-down and dirty; a paltry excuse is a poor one; and a paltry sum is small and insufficient.
ysabetwordsmith posting in birdfeeding merriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 8, 2025 is:
bravado • \bruh-VAH-doh\ • noun
Bravado refers to confident or brave talk or behavior that is intended to impress other people.
// She tells the stories of her youthful exploits with enough bravado to invite suspicion that they're embellished a bit.
// The crew of climbers scaled the mountain with youthful bravado.
Examples:
"One problem that exists in the whitewater community overall is that people don't always understand the basic elements associated with water and their ignorance and bravado often lead to an incident where someone gets injured or killed." — Tracy Hines, The Durango (Colorado) Herald, 19 Oct. 2025
Did you know?
Displays of bravado may be show-offish, daring, reckless, and inconsistent with good sense—take, for example, the spectacular feats of stuntpeople—but when successful, they are still likely to be met with shouts of "bravo!" Celebrities, political leaders, corporate giants, and schoolyard bullies, however, may show a different flavor of bravado: one that suggests an overbearing boldness that comes from arrogance or from being in a position of power. The word bravado originally comes from the Italian adjective bravo, meaning "wild" or "courageous," which English can also thank for the more common brave.
ysabetwordsmith posting in birdfeedingbirdfeeding and see what other folks have in their areas. ysabetwordsmith posting in birdfeeding post_secret_feed
The post Classic Secrets appeared first on PostSecret.
merriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 7, 2025 is:
enigmatic • \en-ig-MAT-ik\ • adjective
Something or someone described as enigmatic is mysterious and difficult to understand.
// The band’s lead singer has always been an enigmatic figure, refusing to use social media or even sit for interviews.
Examples:
“For thirty years, Perlefter’s carpet hung peacefully on the wall in the museum, delighting visitors with its beauty, its unusual palette, enigmatic motifs and its echoes of four empires.” — Dorothy Armstrong, Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets, 2025
Did you know?
The noun enigma can refer to a puzzle, a riddle, a question mark. It’s no mystery then, that the adjective enigmatic describes what is hard to solve or figure out. An enigmatic person, for example, may be someone with a bit of je ne sais quoi. What’s behind a stranger’s enigmatic smile? Your guess is as good as ours. Does the vocabulary in the short story you’re reading render it a tad enigmatic? Better grab a dictionary! Both enigma and enigmatic come from the Greek verb ainissesthai, meaning “to speak in riddles.”
merriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 6, 2025 is:
sensibility • \sen-suh-BIL-uh-tee\ • noun
Sensibility is a formal word often used in its plural form to refer someone’s personal or cultural approach to what they encounter, as in “the speaker made sure to tailor his speech to the sensibilities of his audience.” Sensibility can also be used for the kind of feelings a person tends to have in general, as well as for the ability to feel and understand emotions.
// Many older cartoons feel out of line with modern sensibilities.
// She brought an artistic sensibility to every facet of her life, not just her celebrated painting.
Examples:
“[Lady] Gaga’s absurdist sensibilities have long been an underrated facet of her work—probably because she’s so good at delivering them with a straight face.” — Rich Juzwiak, Pitchfork, 10 Mar. 2025
Did you know?
The meanings of sensibility run the gamut from mere sensation to excessive sentimentality, but we’re here to help you make sense of it all. In between is a capacity for delicate appreciation, a sense often pluralized. In Jane Austen’s books, sensibility is mostly an admirable quality she attributes to, or finds lacking in, her characters: “He had ... a sensibility to what was amiable and lovely” (of Mr. Elliot in Persuasion). In Sense and Sensibility, however, Austen starts out by ascribing to Marianne sensibleness, on the one hand, but an “excess of sensibility” on the other: “Her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation ... she was everything but prudent.”
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