- Today's Word
Inexorable
in-EKS-uh-ruh-buhl
Definition
(adjective) Impossible to stop, persuade, or prevent.
Example
The inexorable advance of technology reshaped every industry.
Fun Fact
Inexorable is a favorite in literature and history writing—used to describe forces, people, or progress that cannot be swayed. It originally referred to people who wouldn’t respond to pleading, but now it also captures time, decay, destiny, or power. It’s often used to describe change that is slow but certain, like rising tides or demographic shifts.
(noun/verb) A gentle, continuous murmuring sound made by water or a person speaking rapidly and excitedly.
The hikers followed the burble of the stream through the dense forest long before they could see it, the sound guiding them toward water and rest.
Burble is an example of onomatopoeia — a word whose sound imitates the thing it describes. It emerged in Middle English as an imitative word for the sound of bubbling or gurgling water, related to the Old French borboiller, meaning “to bubble.” Lewis Carroll famously used it in Jabberwocky — “the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, came whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbled as it came” — cementing its place in the English literary imagination as a word that sounds exactly like what it means.