Today's Word

Hallowed

HAL-ohd

Definition

(adjective) Regarded as holy, honored, or greatly revered.

Example

They walked silently through the hallowed halls of the memorial.

Word Origin

Old English hāliged, past participle of hālgian meaning “to make holy” — related to the word holy itself.

Fun Fact

The word hallowed appears most famously in the phrase “hallowed be thy name” from the Lord’s Prayer, but it shows up everywhere from Presidential speeches to pop culture. It’s often used for places, rituals, or values considered deeply important, especially when there’s a sense of reverence or loss. Think of hallowed ground at battlefields, memorials, or even sports stadiums where legends once played—it’s about history, honor, and awe.

Previous Words

Vacuous

Today's Word

Vacuous

VAK-yoo-us

Definition

(adjective) Devoid of intelligence, substance, or meaningful content; empty in a way that is made worse by the appearance of fullness.

Example

The panel discussion was so vacuous — four articulate people saying nothing of substance for ninety minutes — that the audience left feeling vaguely cheated by their own attention.

Word Origin

Vacuous derives from the Latin vacuus, meaning “empty” or “void,” rooted in vacare — “to be empty” or “to be free.” The same root gives us vacuum, vacant, vacation — all words built around the idea of emptiness or absence. It entered English in the 17th century, initially used in scientific contexts to describe a literal vacuum before acquiring its cutting figurative sense of a mind or expression that contains nothing worth engaging with.

Fun Fact

The philosophical concept of horror vacui — Latin for “fear of the void” — held that nature itself abhors emptiness and will always rush to fill it. Aristotle argued that a true vacuum was physically impossible, a position that dominated scientific thinking for nearly two thousand years until Evangelista Torricelli demonstrated the existence of a vacuum in 1643 using a mercury barometer. The irony is that horror vacui turned out to describe human psychology far more accurately than it described physics — people genuinely do rush to fill empty space, empty silence, and empty conversation with whatever is available, which is precisely how vacuous content comes to occupy so much of the world.

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Hallowed

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Previous Words

Vacuous

Vacuous

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Vacuous

Somnolent

Meritorious

Quiescent

Lachrymose