It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 29th.
Today's word is nefarious, spelled N-E-F-A-R-I-O-U-S.
Nefarious is an adjective.
It's a formal word that describes something as evil or immoral.
Here's the word used in a sentence from comicbook.com.
Introducing characters like Gorilla Grodd on DC Crime would help familiarize audiences with these figures before they potentially receive an expanded role in another project.
Perhaps each season could focus on a different villain highlighting their nefarious actions.
If you need a fancy word to describe someone who's up to no good,
nefarious has got you and them covered.
It's also handy
for characterizing the no good such a dastardly devil gets up to as in a nefarious business or plot or deed.
Nefarious is most often used for someone or something that is flagrantly wicked or corrupt.
It's more applicable to the mustache twirling supervillain than the morally gray antihero.
In other words, there's no question that a nefarious scheme or schemer is not right.
Etymologically, this makes perfect sense.
Nefarious can be traced back to the Latin noun nefas, meaning crime,
which in term combines ne, meaning not, and fa, meaning right, or divine law.
It is one of very few English words with this root,
accompanied only by the likes of nefariousness and the thoroughly obscure word nefast,
meaning wicked.