egregious

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 3, 2025 is: egregious • ih-GREE-juss  • adjective Egregious is a formal word used to describe things that are conspicuously bad. // Leaving one’s phone on during a performance is an egregious breach of theater etiquette. See the entry > Examples: “When a cutting-edge A.I. misbehaves in a particularly egregious way, it can seem shocking. Our instinct is to anthropomorphize the system and ask, ‘What kind of twisted mind would work like that?’” — Cal Newport, The New Yorker, 3 June 2025 Did you know? Some words originally used for animals that gather in flocks have been herded into use for people, too. The Latin word grex means “flock,” “herd,” or “group,” and is the root of several English words, including gregarious, which originally meant “tending to live in a flock, herd, or community rather than alone” but has become a synonym for “sociable,” and egregious. The Latin forebear of egregious, egregius, literally meant “out of the herd” but was used figuratively to mean “outstanding in one’s field.” Egregious entered English in the 16th century with that same, now-obsolete meaning, but over time gained a sense meaning “conspicuously bad” or “flagrant,” possibly as a result of ironic use of its original sense.