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Wiktionary’s Word of the Day features interesting words, terms, and phrases on the Main Page. For Words of the Day in languages other than English, see Foreign Word of the Day. At present, Sgconlaw (talk • contribs) is in charge of the process, setting dates for the words.

Today’s Word of the Day

 

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Word of the day
for September 1
extinct adj
  1. (dated) Of fire, etc.: no longer alight; of a light, etc.: no longer shining; extinguished, quenched.
  2. (figurative)
    1. Of feelings, a person's spirit, a state of affairs, etc.: put out, as if like a fire; quenched, suppressed.
    2. Of customs, ideas, laws and legal rights, offices, organizations, etc.: no longer existing or in use; defunct, discontinued, obsolete; specifically, of a title of nobility: no longer having any person qualified to hold it.
    3. (chiefly biology) Of an animal or plant species, a class of people, a family, etc.: having died out completely; no longer in existence.
    4. (geology) Of a geological feature: no longer active; specifically, of a volcano: no longer erupting.
    5. (nuclear physics) Of a radioisotope: no longer occurring primordially due to having decayed away completely, because it has a relatively short half-life.
    6. (obsolete) Of a person: dead; also, permanently separated from others. [...]

  Martha, thought to be the last passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), died on this day 110 years ago in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A. The eradication of this species, chiefly through habitat destruction and hunting, is a striking example of extinction caused by humans.

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Past Words of the Day

 

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Frequently asked questions

See Wiktionary:Word of the day/FAQ.

History

The first ever Word of the Day was dog, added 14 December 2002, two days after the founding of Wiktionary. Although there were several early attempts to begin a Word of the Day on Wiktionary, the first official WOTD was posted on 10 January 2006.

Considerable opposition to the now wildly popular WOTD was raised, as it was felt that one full year’s supply of terms should be prepared before it appeared on the Main Page. That took over a year to happen.

In 2007, the RSS feed was created, then an alternate feed (no longer operational) was later added. In July and August 2007, the WOTD was added to the Wikimedia Daily Article Mailing List.

Also in early 2007, the entries started being marked with {{was wotd}} to prevent duplicates, and an alphabetic index (which has since failed RFD) was added.

No voting process currently exists for deciding the terms that get featured as WOTD. The volunteers managing it use a set of criteria to ensure adequate variety for any given month’s batch of WOTDs. For details, please see “Wiktionary:Word of the day/Nominations”. Before entries finally make it into the spotlight, they are vetted and tidied up to ensure they are properly formatted and referenced, have suitable quotations, and so on. Only then will they be awesome enough to show to the world!

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