It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 31st.
Today's word is Byzantine, also pronounced Byzantine or Byzantine or Byzantine.
Byzantine is spelled capital B-Y-Z-A-N-T-I-N-E.
Something described as Byzantine is very complicated, secret, and hard to understand.
in its most literal and always capitalized sense,
Byzantine describes that which is of relating to or characteristic of the ancient city of Byzantium.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the LA Times.
Consider that California has among the strongest state privacy laws,
yet tech giants such as Metta and Google,
which make their homes here, are still accused of some of the most egregious privacy violations.
A powerful and universal federal law is required to rein them in.
It would also be more effective than the status quo of a Byzantine patchwork of state laws.
Today, the city that lies on the Bosporus Strait in Turkey is named Istanbul,
but it was once known as Constantinople,
a name given to it when it became the capital of the Byzantine Empire,
also known as the eastern half of the Roman Empire.
and in ancient times it was called Byzantium.
Its history is legendary, filled with mystics, wars, and political infighting,
and over time the word Byzantine, from the late Latin word Byzantine Nus,
the name for a native of Byzantium,