Today's Word

Awestruck

[AW-struk]

Definition

(noun) To overwhelm someone with an impressive display or experience, leaving them in a state of wonder and admiration. It’s when you cause someone to be so amazed that they’re momentarily speechless or frozen in place.

Example

The street performer’s incredible magic trick completely awestruck the crowd, leaving everyone wide-eyed and open-mouthed for several seconds.

Fun Fact

The word “awestruck” combines “awe” with “struck,” capturing the idea of being hit by a sense of wonder. Neuroscientific research has shown that experiencing awe can have positive effects on the brain and body. A study in the journal “Emotion” found that awe-inspiring experiences can lower levels of cytokines, proteins that signal inflammation in the body. This suggests that being awestruck may have tangible health benefits, potentially reducing the risk of depression and autoimmune diseases.

Previous Words

Sybaritic

Today's Word

Sybaritic

sib-uh-RIT-ik

Definition

(adjective) Relating to or characterized by excessive devotion to sensual pleasure and luxury.

Example

The retreat was unapologetically sybaritic — every surface chosen for how it felt, every meal an event, every hour structured around pleasure so deliberately it became its own kind of discipline.

Word Origin

Sybaritic derives from Sybaris — an ancient Greek colony in southern Italy founded around 720 BCE, whose citizens became so legendarily devoted to luxury and pleasure that their name became synonymous with the lifestyle itself. The Sybarites were said to banish roosters from the city to avoid being woken early, to have invented reclining dining couches so they needn’t sit upright while eating, and to have trained their horses to dance to music — a detail that proved their undoing when the rival city of Croton played pipes during battle and the Sybarite cavalry danced itself into confusion. Sybaris was destroyed in 510 BCE, but its reputation outlasted it by two and a half millennia.

Fun Fact

The fall of Sybaris is one of antiquity’s most satisfying cautionary tales — a city so devoted to pleasure that it was defeated by the very refinement it had cultivated. The story of the dancing horses became a standard example in ancient rhetoric of how excessive luxury produces military weakness, cited by everyone from Aristotle to Athenaeus. Modern historians note that the dancing horses story is almost certainly apocryphal — but it was too perfectly sybaritic to be abandoned, which may be the most sybaritic thing about it.

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Awestruck

Definition

Example

Previous Words

Sybaritic

Sybaritic

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Sybaritic

Gaffe

Lassitude

Wheedle

Callow