Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 19, 2025 is:

veritable • \VAIR-uh-tuh-bul\  • adjective

Veritable is a formal adjective that means “being in fact the thing named and not false, unreal, or imaginary.” It is often used to stress the aptness of a metaphorical description.

// The island is a veritable paradise.

// The sale attracted a veritable mob of people.

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Examples:

“The Roma are often described as an ethnic minority, but many Romani communities view ‘Roma’ as a broad racial identity, stretching all the way back to our Indian ancestry. Indeed, to look at the Roma as one ethnicity is to disregard the veritable mosaic of Romani subgroups. There’s a thread that holds us all together, which to me feels like a string of fairy lights scattered across the world. Each of these lights shines with its own unique beauty.” — Madeline Potter, The Roma: A Traveling History, 2025

Did you know?

Veritable, like its close relative verity (“truth”), came to English through Anglo-French from Latin, ultimately the adjective vērus, meaning “true,” which also gave English verify, aver, and verdict. Veritable is often used as a synonym of genuine or authentic (“a veritable masterpiece”), but it is also frequently used to stress the aptness of a metaphor, often with a humorous tone (“a veritable swarm of lawyers”). In the past, language commentators objected to the latter use, but today it doesn’t draw much criticism.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 17, 2025 is:

kibosh • \KYE-bosh\  • noun

Kibosh refers to something that serves as a check or stop. It is usually used in the phrase “put the kibosh on” to mean “to stop or end (something)” or “to prevent (something) from happening or continuing.”

// I downloaded an app to help me put the kibosh on my high screen time.

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Examples:

“… Maybe, suggests [Graham] Dugoni and other advocates, instead of putting the kibosh on devices entirely, we need to treat modern society like a teenager on a rebellious streak. Rather than saying no, we need to show them support, offer a gentle hand, maybe even make them think it’s their idea. In a way, it’s time for some gentle parenting.” — Chase DiBenedetto, Mashable, 3 June 2025

Did you know?

Evidence of kibosh dates the word to only a few years before Charles Dickens used it in an 1836 sketch, but despite kibosh being relatively young its source is elusive. Claims were once made that it was Yiddish, despite the absence of a plausible Yiddish source. Another hypothesis pointed to the Irish term caidhp bhais, literally, “coif (or cap) of death,” explained as headgear a judge put on when pronouncing a death sentence, or as a covering pulled over the face of a corpse when a coffin was closed. But evidence for any metaphorical use of this phrase in Irish is lacking, and kibosh is not recorded in English as spoken in Ireland until decades after Dickens’s use. More recent source theories include a heraldic term for an animal’s head when born with only its face fully showing, and an Arabic word meaning “whip, lash,” but as the note at our etymology explains, no theory has sufficient evidence to back it.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 15, 2025 is:

coalesce • \koh-uh-LESS\  • verb

To coalesce is to come together to form one group or mass.

// The club’s community service projects provide students with a common goal to coalesce around.

// The movie is full of beautifully written scenes but they never coalesce into a whole.

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Examples:

“... as Angola prepares for the final, the combination of personal perseverance, team cohesion, and national pride coalesces into something bigger than a game: a celebration of resilience, dedication, and the enduring spirit of basketball in Angola.” — Sindiswa Mabunda, Forbes, 24 Aug. 2025

Did you know?

The meaning of many English words equals the sum of their parts, and coalesce is a fitting example. The word unites the prefix co- (“together”) and the Latin verb alescere, meaning “to grow.” Coalesce is one of a number of English verbs (along with mix, commingle, merge, and amalgamate) that refer to the act of combining parts into a whole. In particular, coalesce usually implies the merging of similar parts to form a cohesive unit, such as a political ideology, a fan-following, or (perish the thought) a Portuguese man-of-war, the body of which includes three types of zooids.