abscond

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 13, 2026 is: abscond • ab-SKAHND  • verb To abscond is to leave, flee, or escape a place in secret and go into hiding. Often, someone is said to have absconded with something. // It was mid-semester, when fantasies about absconding from school and leaving the stress of exams behind abound. See the entry > Examples: “So having a variety of financial intermediaries is good. But they need to be regulated and supervised by objective parties using objective standards. If not, someone could open a bank, take deposits and abscond to a tropical isle.” — Edward Lotterman, The St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press, 23 Nov. 2025 Did you know? In “Take the Money and Run,” a 1976 song by the Steve Miller Band, the singer punctuates a song about teenage bandits with the catchy refrain “Go on, take the money and run.” Granted, the song probably wouldn’t have charted had it been titled “Abscond,” but the meaning would have been the same. Abscond is a word most often used in formal contexts for when someone is running and hiding from the law, often with cash or other ill-gotten gains. In legal circles it’s used specifically when someone flies like an eagle from a jurisdiction to evade the legal process, as in “absconded from parole.” The history of abscond doesn’t evade scrutiny: it comes from the Latin verb abscondere, meaning “to hide away.” (That word’s root is condere, meaning “to conceal.”) Today, whether some joker absconds by going to the country to bury some treasure or by taking a jet airliner beyond the law’s reach, they are, in essence, hiding themselves away.