chary

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

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🗓️ 10 April 2025

⏱️ 2 minutes

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Summary

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 10, 2025 is:

chary • \CHAIR-ee\ • adjective

Chary is usually used with about or of to describe someone who is cautious about doing something.

// The director is chary about spending money.

// I’ve always been chary of travelling alone.

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Examples:

“Overall, Rendell is chary about divulging the selling price of various documents, but he does occasionally reveal some financial details.” — Michael Dirda, The Washington Post, 3 Feb. 2024

Did you know?

How did chary, which began as the opposite of cheery, become a synonym of wary? Don’t worry, there’s no need to be chary—the answer is not dreary. Chary’s Middle English predecessor, charri, meant “sorrowful,” a sense that harks back to the Old English word cearig, meaning “troubled, troublesome, taking care,” which ultimately comes from an assumed-but-unattested Germanic word, karō, meaning “sorrow” or “worry,” that is also an ancestor of the word care. It’s perhaps unsurprising then, that chary was once used to mean “dear” or “cherished.” Both sorrow and affection have largely faded from chary, and today the word is most often used as a synonym of careful.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the Word of the Day podcast for April 10th.
0:11.0	Today's word is Cherry, spelled C-H-A-R-Y.
0:15.0	Cherry is an adjective.
0:17.0	It's usually used with the words about or of to describe someone who is cautious about doing something.
0:24.3	Here's the word used in a sentence from the Washington Post by Michael Derda.
0:28.9	Overall, Rendell is Cherry about divulging the selling price of various documents, but he does
0:35.0	occasionally reveal some financial details.
0:44.3	How did the word Cherry, which began as the opposite of the word cheery, become a synonym of the word wary? Don't worry. There's no need to be chary. The answer is not dreary.
0:50.3	Cherry's Middle English predecessor, Chari, meant sorrowful, a sense that harks back to the old
0:57.3	English word, caric, meaning troubled, troublesome, or taking care, which ultimately comes from an assumed
1:03.8	but unattested Germanic word, meaning sorrow or worry, that is also an ancestor of the word
1:10.5	care. It's perhaps unsurprising then that
1:14.3	Cherry was once used to mean dear or cherished. Both sorrow and affection have largely faded from
1:21.2	cherry, and today the word is most often used as a synonym of the word careful. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
1:32.5	Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.

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