audacious

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 9, 2023 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>audacious</strong> &#149; \aw-DAY-shus\&nbsp; &#149; <em>adjective</em><br /> <p><em>Audacious</em> is an adjective used to describe people, or things that people make or do, that are confident and daring, or bold and surprising.</p> <p>// She made the <em>audacious</em> decision to quit her job.</p> <p>// The band has been making original and creative music for well over ten years, but their latest album is their most <em>audacious</em> to date.</p> <p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/audacious">See the entry ></a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>“My auntie Carolyn was a teacher at Bunker Hills School in Washington, DC. She was an <em>audacious</em> teacher, and invited the Queen of England to her classroom—and the Queen came, twice. Teachers like that make such a difference.” — Sheryl Lee Ralph, quoted in <em>Ebony</em>, 16 Aug. 2023</p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>Fortune favors the bold—or, as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virgil">ancient Romans</a> are known to have said, “audentes Fortuna iuvat.” <em>Audentes</em> here is the present participle of the Latin verb <em>audēre</em>, meaning “to dare,” a word that also led, via several etymological twists and turns through the centuries, to the English adjective <em>audacious</em>. When it first appeared in English in the mid-1500s, <em>audacious</em> meant “intrepidly daring,” a sense we still use today when we apply the word to various feats of <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/derring-do">derring-do</a> and those who dare to do them. Since then it has developed several additional meanings, including the closely related “recklessly bold” and “marked by originality and <a href="/dictionary/verve">verve</a>,” as in “her audacious new album hera