It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 13th.

Today's word is gravitate, spelled G-R-A-V-I-T-A-E.

Gravitate is a verb. To gravitate is to move, tend to move, or be attracted to to or towards something or someone.

Here's the word used in a sentence from CNBC.

Olypop has grown into a nationwide brand and favorite among Gen Z and millennial consumers who gravitate to the

brands eye catching, packaging, and nostalgia-inducing flavors like Root Beer and Vintage Kola, many of which Goodwin comes up with in the early hours of the morning.

The force is strong in the family of words, descended from the Latin adjective, gravis, meaning heavy.

Gravitation has it, graviton has it, and gravitate has it too.

That force is gravity, gravity being another gravis descendant, a fundamental physical force that is

responsible for bringing us literally back down to earth, or tattooing as it were. But you don't have to be a full-fledged linguistic

Jedi, young Padawan to know that gravity like its Latin ancestor also has

figurative meanings, as does gravitate.

When it first landed in the 17th century, gravitate meant

to apply pressure or weight,

and later it maintained its connection to literal gravity with a sense still in use today

meaning to move under the effect of gravitation.

It then, however, acquired a more general sense of to move toward something, such as toward a specific

location, and finally a metaphorical sense of to be attracted, as in when choosing

movies to watch, she often gravitates towards space operas.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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