Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 16, 2025 is:
biannual • \bye-AN-yuh-wul\ • adjective
Biannual is an adjective used to describe something that happens twice a year, or something that happens every two years.
// The art show is a biannual event that won’t happen again for two more years.
// The group holds biannual meetings in December and July.
See the entry >
Examples:
“About 200 miles of trails make up The Alabama Coastal Birding Trail along Alabama’s Gulf coast. These comprehensive trails span both Baldwin and Mobile counties, following the coastline, wetlands, and backwaters—all crucial stopover habitats for migratory birds. Visit in the fall or spring to see part of the beautiful biannual journey for yourself.” — Catherine Jessee, Southern Living, 8 Mar. 2025
Did you know?
When we describe something as biannual, we can mean either that it occurs twice a year or that it occurs once every two years. So how does someone know which particular meaning we have in mind? Well, unless we provide them with a contextual clue, they don’t. Some people prefer to use semiannual to refer to something that occurs twice a year, reserving biannual for things that occur once every two years. This practice is hardly universal among English speakers, however, and biannual remains a potentially ambiguous word. Fortunately, English also provides us with biennial, a word that specifically refers to something that occurs every two years or that lasts or continues for two years.
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biannual
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 16, 2025 is:
biannual • \bye-AN-yuh-wul\ • adjective
Biannual is an adjective used to describe something that happens twice a year, or something that happens every two years. Biannual is always used before the noun it describes.
// The art show is a biannual event that won’t happen again for two more years.
// The group holds biannual meetings in December and July.
See the entry >
Examples:
“About 200 miles of trails make up The Alabama Coastal Birding Trail along Alabama’s Gulf coast. These comprehensive trails span both Baldwin and Mobile counties, following the coastline, wetlands, and backwaters—all crucial stopover habitats for migratory birds. Visit in the fall or spring to see part of the beautiful biannual journey for yourself.” — Catherine Jessee, Southern Living, 8 Mar. 2025
Did you know?
When we describe something as biannual, we can mean either that it occurs twice a year or that it occurs once every two years. So how does someone know which particular meaning we have in mind? Well, unless we provide them with a contextual clue, they don’t. Some people prefer to use semiannual to refer to something that occurs twice a year, reserving biannual for things that occur once every two years. This practice is hardly universal among English speakers, however, and biannual remains a potentially ambiguous word. Fortunately, English also provides us with biennial, a word that specifically refers to something that occurs every two years or that lasts or continues for two years.
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coalesce
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.
See the entry >
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.
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utopia
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 14, 2025 is:
utopia • \yoo-TOH-pee-uh\ • noun
Utopia refers to an imaginary place in which the government, laws, and social conditions are perfect; a utopia is a place of ideal perfection.
// It’s a nice place to live, but it’s no utopia.
See the entry >
Examples:
“Despite the rest of the group arguing with and (mostly) disagreeing with him for half the evening, my colleague stuck to his guns: it would be handy to have robots writing poetry for people. … But at the heart of my colleague’s provocative position was a utopian ideal: of a future in which technology was advanced enough to ‘do everything,’ even write poetry, so that no one needed to work. Yet this position wasn’t convincing either. His utopia sounded more than a little dull, and nobody wants to be bored out of their minds.” — Surekha Davies, Humans: A Monstrous History, 2025
Did you know?
There’s quite literally no place like utopia. In 1516, English humanist Sir Thomas More published a book titled Utopia, which compared social and economic conditions in Europe with those of an ideal society on an imaginary island located off the coast of the Americas. More wanted to imply that the perfect conditions on his fictional island could never really exist, so he called it “Utopia,” a name he created by combining the Greek words ou (“not, no”) and topos (“place”). The earliest generic use of utopia was for an imaginary and indefinitely remote place. The current use of utopia, referring to an ideal place or society, was inspired by More’s description of Utopia’s perfection.
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penultimate
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 13, 2025 is:
penultimate • \pih-NUL-tuh-mut\ • adjective
Penultimate means "occurring immediately before the last one," or in other words, "next to last." A formal adjective, it is always used before the noun it modifies.
// The penultimate episode of the TV series features some shocking plot twists that set up what will surely be a thrilling series finale.
See the entry >
Examples:
"The high school soccer playoffs are down to their penultimate round with the state semifinals looming later this week after a select few regional champions were crowned on Tuesday." — Matt Welch, The Plano (Texas) Star Courier, 2 Apr. 2025
Did you know?
Penultimate isn't the last word in words for things that are next to last. It has a pair of closely-related noun synonyms: penult and penultima. Although all three concern something that's next to last, penult and penultima are usually a bit more specific; they are used most often to identify the next to last syllable of a word. All three come from paenultima, the feminine of paenultimus, a Latin root from paene ("almost") and ultimus ("last"). You may occasionally hear the word penultimate used as an intensified version of ultimate, as in "a race they've called 'the penultimate challenge.'" This use isn't typically found in edited prose, however, or in dictionaries, as discussed in this video.
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