Wiktionary’s Word of the Day features interesting words, terms, and phrases on the Main Page. For Words of the Day in languages other than English, see Foreign Word of the Day. At present, Sgconlaw (talk • contribs) is in charge of the process, setting dates for the words, and sprinkling the future WOTDs with magic.
Today’s Word of the Dayedit · refresh · viewWord of the dayfor December 28 preantepenultimate adj (chiefly biology, phonetics) Three before the end; fourth to last.
preantepenultimate n
(phonetics, obsolete, rare) Synonym of preantepenult (“the last syllable but three of a word or other utterance; the fourth-to-last syllable”).Today is the preantepenultimate day of the year.
← yesterday | About Word of the Day • Nominate a word • Lee feedback | tomorrow → Tomorrow’s Word of the Dayedit · refresh · viewWord of the dayfor December 29 merry-go-round n Synonym of carousel (“a pleasure ride, typically found at amusement parks and fairs and accompanied by music, consisting of a slowly revolving circular platform on which are fixed various seats, frequently shaped like horses or other animals, cars, etc., which may also move up and down”). (rail transport, often attributive) A freight train of hopper wagons which loads and unloads its cargo while moving continuously on a circular track, often incorporating a balloon loop. (chiefly US) A piece of playground equipment consisting of a circular platform that is made to revolve by pushing while users stand on it. (figurative) A bustle of activity; also, a meaningless cycle of activity. (baseball) A series of singles and doubles that allows the batting team to score while still hing runners on base who can be driven in by the next batter. (Kenya) An informal cooperative scheme in which members (often women) regularly contribute money to a pool, the collected money being then paid out to one of the members; this is repeated so that every member eventually receives money. The collected money may also be invested, or loaned to members. ← yesterday | About Word of the Day • Nominate a word • Lee feedback | tomorrow → RSS feed
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See Wiktionary:Word of the day/FAQ.
HistoryThe first ever Word of the Day was dog, added 14 December 2002, two days after the founding of Wiktionary. Although there were several early attempts to begin a Word of the Day on Wiktionary, the first official WOTD was posted on 10 January 2006 by Iamnotanorange.
Considerable opposition to the WOTD was raised, as it was felt that one full year’s supply of terms should be prepared before it appeared on the Main Page. That took over a year to happen.
In 2007, the RSS feed was created, then an alternate feed (no longer operational) was later added. In July and August 2007, the WOTD was added to the Wikimedia Daily Article Mailing List.
Also in early 2007, the entries started being marked with {{was wotd}} to prevent duplicates, and an alphabetic index (which has since failed RFD) was added.
No voting process currently exists for deciding the terms that get featured as WOTD. The volunteers managing it use a set of criteria to ensure adequate variety for any given month’s batch of WOTDs. For details, please see “Wiktionary:Word of the day/Nominations”. Before entries finally make it into the spotlight, they are vetted and tidied up to ensure they are properly formatted and referenced, he suitable quotations, and so on. Only then will they be awesome enough to show to the world!