opine
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
Merriam-Webster
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🗓️ 22 January 2025
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Summary
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 22, 2025 is:
opine • \oh-PYNE\ • verb
To opine is to express an opinion about something.
// Many people opine that social media platforms should be better regulated.
Examples:
“Entertainment will always be inherently social. This latest age has prompted society to take a page out of video game culture, which has long relied on building a digital community. We text those we care about after a cliffhanger season finale and jump on social media to opine on the latest movie or show, sharing views on the best scenes or even recording oneself watching an intense scene for posting on social media.” — Geir Skaaden, Variety, 28 Aug. 2024
Did you know?
We are not opining—that is, expressing our opinion—when we say that opine is not a back-formation of opinion, though the two words do share a common ancestry. A back-formation is a word formed by the subtraction of part of an existing word; for instance, the verb bartend is a back-formation of the noun bartender. Opine and opinion, however, both entered English independently, taking different routes from their mutual roots in the Latin verb opīnārī, meaning “to have in mind” or “to think.” Opinion arrived in the 14th century, while opine followed about a century later.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the word of the day for January 22nd. |
| 0:11.4 | Today's word is opine, spelled O-P-I-N-E. |
| 0:16.2 | Opine is a verb. |
| 0:17.6 | To opine is to express an opinion about something. |
| 0:20.8 | Here's the word used in a sentence |
| 0:22.4 | from Variety by Gere Skaden. Entertainment will always be inherently social. This latest age has |
| 0:30.9 | prompted society to take a page out of video game culture, which has long relied on building |
| 0:36.4 | a digital community. We text those we care |
| 0:39.8 | about after a cliffhanger season finale and jump on social media to opine on the latest movie or show, |
| 0:47.1 | sharing views on the best scenes or even recording oneself watching an intense scene for posting on |
| 0:53.2 | social media. |
| 0:55.0 | We're not opining, that is expressing our opinion, when we say that the word opine is not |
| 1:02.0 | a back formation of the word opinion, though the two words do share a common ancestry. |
| 1:08.0 | A back formation is a word formed by the subtraction of part of an |
| 1:12.6 | existing word. For instance, the verb bartend is a back formation of the noun bartender. Opine |
| 1:20.1 | and opinion, however, both entered English independently, taking different roots from their |
| 1:26.0 | mutual roots in the Latin verb Opinare, meaning |
| 1:30.4 | to have in mind or to think. Opinion arrived in the 14th century, while opine followed about a |
| 1:37.7 | century later. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. |
| 1:45.0 | Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups. |
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