Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 25, 2025 is:

sui generis • \soo-eye-JEN-uh-ris\  • adjective

Sui generis is a formal adjective used to describe someone or something in a class or group of its own, or in other words, unlike anyone or anything else.

// As a scholar, she is sui generis, head and shoulders above everyone else in her field.

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Examples:

“TV on the Radio, the celebrated group whose experimental amalgam of rock, post-punk, electronic, and soul made it sui generis in the 2000s New York scene, knew it was time for a break. It was 2019, and after nearly 20 years and five albums together, the nonstop demands of recording and touring had taken its creative and physical toll.” — Jason Newman, Rolling Stone, 16 Apr. 2025

Did you know?

Many English words ultimately trace back to the Latin forms gener- or genus (which are variously translated as “birth,” “race,” “kind,” and “class”). Offspring of those roots include general, generate, generous, generic, and gender. But sui generis is truly a one-of-a-kind genus descendant that English speakers have used to describe singular things since the late 1600s. Its earliest uses were in scientific contexts, but where it once mostly characterized substances, principles, diseases, and even rocks thought to be the only representative of their class or group, its use expanded by the early 1900s, and it is now used more generally for anything that stands alone.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 24, 2025 is:

panacea • \pan-uh-SEE-uh\  • noun

A panacea is something that is regarded as a cure-all—that is, something that will make everything about a situation better.

// The new program should help with the city’s housing crisis, but it’s no panacea.

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Examples:

“It was a mistake to regard and romanticize information as a panacea for the world’s problems. For they are completely different things: information, knowledge and wisdom. Every day we are bombarded with thousands of snippets of information, but there is very little knowledge, and no time to slow down to gain knowledge, much less wisdom.” — Elif Shafak, 1984: 75th Anniversary Edition by George Orwell, 2024

Did you know?

The maxim “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” isn’t true, but belief in a miraculous botanical “cure for whatever ails ya” has existed for millennia and is at the root of the word panacea. In current use, panacea most often refers to a remedy—medical or otherwise—that inevitably falls far short of what some claim or hope it can do, but the word’s Latin and Greek forebears referred to plants with legit healing properties, including mints and yarrows. Both the Latin word panacēa and its Greek antecedent panákeia (from the word panakēs, meaning “all-healing”) were applied especially to flowering herbs (genus Opopanax) of the carrot family used to treat various ailments.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 23, 2025 is:

logy • \LOH-ghee\  • adjective

Like sluggish and groggy, logy describes a person who is not able to think or move normally because of being tired, sick, etc., or something that moves slowly and ploddingly.

// The heavy meal left me feeling logy and in need of a nap.

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Examples:

"The picture moves at a stately pace that one supposes was considered period-appropriate but feels merely logy at times." — Glenn Kenny, The New York Times, 15 May 2025

Did you know?

The origins of the word logy (sometimes spelled loggy) likely lie in the Dutch word log, meaning "heavy," a relation of the ancient German adjective luggich, meaning "lazy." The word shares no history with the log of campfires, which is centuries older and has probable Scandinavian roots. Likewise, it has no etymological connection to groggy, which describes someone weak and unsteady on the feet or in action. That word ultimately comes from the nickname of an English admiral: "Old Grog," concerned with the health of his crew, served diluted rum to his sailors, who returned the favor by dubbing the rum mixture grog. (Modern grog is typically rum, or another liquor, cut with water and served warm, sweetened, and with lemon.)