About this episode
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 5, 2026 is:
verdant • \VER-dunt\ • adjective
Verdant describes something that is green in tint or color, or green because it is covered with growing plants. Verdant can also describe a person who is inexperienced or has not yet developed good judgment.
// The golf course is noted for its tricky hazards and lush, verdant borders along its fairways.
Examples:
“On the other side, the lusher Santa Cruz Mountains, a place of dank redwood forests, organic farming communes, and uppity vineyards, form a verdant curtain between the Valley and the ocean.” — Brian Barth, Front Street: Resistance and Rebirth in the Tent Cities of Techlandia, 2025
Did you know?
English speakers have been using verdant as a ripe synonym of green since at least the 16th century, and as a descriptive term for inexperienced or naive people since the 19th century. (By contrast, the more experienced green has colored our language since well before the 12th century, and was first applied to inexperienced people in the 16th century.) Verdant traces back to the Old French word for “green,” vert, which itself is from the Latin word viridis. Some lesser-known words for shades of green in English include prasine (“having the green color of a leek”), smaragdine (“yellowish green in color like an emerald”), and another viridis descendent, viridescent (“slightly green”).
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day — verdant. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
0:00It's the word of the day podcast for April 5th. Today's word is verdant. Spelled V-E-R-D-A-N-T. Verdant is an adjective. It describes something that is green in tint or color, or green because it's covered with growing plants. Verdant can also describe a person who is inexperienced or has not yet developed good judgment. Here's the word used in a sentence from Front Street, Resistance and Rebirth in the Tent Cities of Teclandia by Brian Barth. On the other side, the Lusher Santa Cruz Mountains, a place of dank, redwood forests, organic farming communes, and uppity vineyards, form a verdant curtain between the valley and the ocean. English speakers have been using the word verdant as a ripe synonym of green since at least the 16th century,
1:04and as a descriptive term for inexperienced or naïve people since the 19th century. By contrast, the more experienced word green has colored our language since well before the 12th century and was first applied to inexperienced people in the 16th century. Verdant traces back to the old French word for green, verd, which itself is from the Latin word Verides. Some lesser-known words for shades of green in English include praysine, meaning having the green color of a leak, smaradden, meaning yellowish green in color like an emerald, and another very-deuce descendant, veridescent, meaning slightly green. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sakalowski. Visit MarianWebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.
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