Today's Word

Mollify

MAH-lih-fy

Definition

(verb) To appease or soothe someone’s anger or anxiety; to soften or calm.

Example

The manager tried to mollify the frustrated customer by offering a full refund and sincere apology.

Word Origin

Late Middle English: from French “mollifier” or Latin “mollificare,” from “mollis” meaning “soft.”

Fun Fact

Mollify literally means “to make soft,” and this softening applies to emotions rather than physical objects. Diplomats and customer service representatives are professional mollifiers, trained to transform anger into acceptance. The word shares its root with “mollusk” (soft-bodied creatures) and “emollient” (skin softeners). Interestingly, you can mollify someone without actually solving their problem—sometimes people just need their feelings acknowledged. Ancient rhetoricians studied mollification as an essential persuasive technique, recognizing that softening opposition often matters more than winning arguments.

Previous Words

Dearth

Today's Word

Dearth

DURTH

Definition

(noun) A severe lack or scarcity of something; an inadequate supply that falls critically short of what is needed.

Example

The report revealed a striking dearth of qualified candidates — not because the field lacked talent, but because decades of underfunding had quietly hollowed out the pipeline entirely.

Word Origin

Dearth derives from the Old English dēorþ, meaning “dearness” or “costliness” — rooted in dēore, meaning “dear” or “precious.” The original sense was economic: something so scarce it had become expensive, its rarity driving up its price. It entered Middle English as derthe, used specifically to describe famines and food shortages, before broadening into its modern sense of any critical scarcity. The word carries its economic origin quietly — the idea that what is scarce becomes dear, and what is dear reveals a dearth.

Fun Fact

The Great Famine of 1845 to 1852 remains history’s most devastating modern example of dearth — a catastrophic scarcity of food that killed approximately one million people in Ireland and drove another million to emigrate within the first two years alone. What made it particularly devastating was not merely the failure of the potato crop but the simultaneous export of other food from Ireland to England throughout the famine, a political decision that transformed a natural disaster into a human one. Ireland’s population, which stood at around eight million before the famine, had fallen to just over four million by the early 20th century — a dearth whose demographic consequences lasted well over a century.

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Mollify

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Previous Words

Dearth

Dearth

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Dearth

Propitious

Surfeit

Malediction

Vacillate