penchant
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
Merriam-Webster
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🗓️ 31 March 2025
⏱️ 2 minutes
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Summary
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 31, 2025 is:
penchant • \PEN-chunt\ • noun
Penchant refers to a strong liking for something, or a strong tendency to behave in a certain way. It is usually used with for.
// My penchant for mathematics helped me become an engineer.
Examples:
"Sly Lives! is exceptionally strong in its attention to musical detail—even more than Questlove's previous cinematic effort, the Academy Award–winning Summer of Soul, Sly Lives! feels like a film made by a great musician. The film's interviewees offer illuminating ruminations on Sly's vocal arrangements, including his penchant for switching back and forth between unison vocal parts and harmonized ones ..." — Jack Hamilton, Slate, 13 Feb. 2025
Did you know?
English has multiple p-words that imply a strong instinct or liking for something, including propensity and proclivity, but to keep things precise, penchant is the proper word for implying a pronounced, persistent taste in a person ("a penchant for pretty pendants") or a predominant predilection for performing particular actions ("a penchant for petting penguins"). Penchant traces back all the way to the Latin verb pendere, meaning "to weigh," but is more immediately preceded in English by the French word penchant, from the present participle of pencher, meaning "to incline."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the word of the day for March 31st. |
| 0:08.0 | Today's word is penchant, spelled P-E-N-C-H-A-N-T. |
| 0:17.0 | Pension is a noun. It refers to a strong liking for something or a strong tendency to behave |
| 0:22.9 | in a certain way. It's usually used with the word for. Here's the word used in a sentence from |
| 0:28.6 | Slate by Jack Hamilton. Sly Lives is exceptionally strong in its attention to musical detail. |
| 0:35.6 | Even more than Questlove's previous cinematic effort, the Academy |
| 0:39.5 | Award-winning Summer of Soul, Sly lives, feels like a film made by a great musician. The film's |
| 0:46.2 | interviewees offer illuminating ruminations on Sly's vocal arrangements, including his |
| 0:51.4 | penchant for switching back and forth between unison vocal parts |
| 0:55.2 | and harmonized ones. English has multiple P words that imply a strong instinct or liking for something, |
| 1:03.3 | including propensity and proclivity. But to keep things precise, penchant is the proper word for |
| 1:10.3 | implying a pronounced persistent taste in a person, |
| 1:13.7 | as in a penchant for pretty pendants, or a predominant predilection for performing particular |
| 1:19.7 | actions, as in a penchant for petting penguins. Penchant traces all the way back to the Latin |
| 1:26.4 | verb pendere, meaning to weigh, but is more |
| 1:29.7 | immediately preceded in English by the French word ponchant, from the present participle of |
| 1:35.7 | ponchet, meaning to incline. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. |
| 1:43.9 | Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups. |
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