genial

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 14, 2023 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>genial</strong> &#149; \JEEN-yul\&nbsp; &#149; <em>adjective</em><br /> <p>Someone described as <em>genial</em> is cheerful and pleasant; a thing described as <em>genial</em> suggests or expresses friendliness and cheer. </p> <p>// Omar was a most <em>genial</em> host, making sure to spend time with each and every one of the guests at the reception. </p> <p>// Though I knew no one at the conference, the <em>genial</em> atmosphere immediately put me at ease.</p> <p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genial">See the entry ></a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>“There’s a fresh way to revisit [John] Prine apart from the catalog of records he left behind. Five decades’ worth of stories about and conversations with the artist have been collected by Holly Gleason in ‘Prine on Prine: Interviews and Encounters With John Prine’.... To know him is to love him, and to love <em>and</em> know Prine is to spend a lot of hours in his presence via Gleason’s essential compendium, which finds his observational candor, fierce intelligence and <em>genial</em> warmth to be unwavering over a half-century of meeting the press.” — Chris Willman, <em>Variety</em>, 10 Oct. 2023</p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>Warm, cheerful, and pleasant? That’s <em>genial</em> in a bottle, baby. Or at least (if such a declaration rubs you the wrong way) that’s the most common sense of <em>genial</em>. You may also be familiar with its closely related meaning of “favorable to growth or comfort” as in “what a girl wants most on vacation is to recline in the genial sunshine.” Or perhaps you’ve heard <em>genial</em> used to describe someone or something displaying or marked by <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genius">genius</a>, as in “who among us doesn’t