Today's Word

Glut

GLUHT

Definition

(noun/verb) An excessively abundant supply of something; or to supply or fill to excess.

Example

The market glut of avocados caused prices to plummet, leaving farmers with unsold crops.

Word Origin

Middle English: from Old French “gloutir” meaning “to swallow,” derived from Latin “gluttire” meaning “to gulp down.”

Fun Fact

A glut isn’t always about food—though the word’s swallowing origins suggest it. Economic gluts happen when supply dramatically exceeds demand, flooding markets and crashing prices. The 1980s oil glut saw prices collapse from oversupply. Tech companies experience gluts too—remember when warehouses overflowed with unsold fidget spinners? While abundance sounds positive, a glut reveals the delicate balance between plenty and excess. Too much of anything, even something valuable, can become worthless when there’s simply too much to go around.

Previous Words

Calumny

Today's Word

Calumny

KAL-um-nee

Definition

(noun) The making of false and damaging statements about someone; deliberate defamation of character.

Example

The calumny spread through the firm before anyone thought to check whether a single word of it was true — and by then, the damage was permanent.

Word Origin

Calumny derives from the Latin calumnia, meaning “false accusation” or “trickery,” rooted in calvi — “to trick” or “to deceive.” It entered English in the 15th century through Old French, used in legal and moral contexts to describe the deliberate fabrication of damaging falsehoods about another person. Unlike slander, which can be accidental or careless, calumny implies intent — the calculated deployment of lies as weapons against a specific target.

Fun Fact

Shakespeare was so preoccupied with calumny that it appears as a central destructive force in at least five of his plays. In Othello, Iago’s campaign of calumny against Desdemona destroys two lives without a single true accusation ever being made. In Much Ado About Nothing, a similarly fabricated slander nearly ends in tragedy before the truth emerges. Shakespeare understood something that modern psychology has since confirmed — that false accusations, once circulated, are almost impossible to fully retract. Studies show that corrections rarely travel as far or as fast as the original falsehood, which is why calumny has been one of history’s most effective and most devastating weapons.

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Glut

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Previous Words

Calumny

Calumny

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Calumny

Ennui

Iniquity

Protean

Enervate