preeminent
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
Merriam-Webster
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🗓️ 30 January 2026
⏱️ 2 minutes
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Summary
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 30, 2026 is:
preeminent • \pree-EM-uh-nunt\ • adjective
Preeminent is a formal word used to describe someone or something more important, skillful, or successful than their counterparts or peers. It is used synonymously with outstanding and supreme.
// She's the preeminent chef in a city renowned for its cuisine.
Examples:
"In this warmly engaging intellectual biography, [author Paul R.] Viotti traces the life and ideas of Kenneth Waltz, a preeminent figure in post–World War II international relations scholarship." — G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs, 16 Dec. 2025
Did you know?
What is noteworthy about the following sentence? "Mount Kilimanjaro is a prominent eminence on the Tanzanian landscape." You very likely recognized two words that are closely related to preeminent: prominent and eminence. All three words are rooted in the Latin verb stem -minēre, which is taken to mean "to stand out" though there is no record of its use without a prefix. Mount also deserves an honorable mention: it comes from the Latin mont- or mons, meaning "mountain," which is understood to share a common ancestor with -minēre. Mount leads us in turn to paramount, a word closely related in meaning to preeminent.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Word of the Day podcast for January 30th. |
| 0:11.6 | Today's word is preeminent, spelled P-R-E-E-M-I-N-T. |
| 0:18.6 | Preeminent is an adjective. |
| 0:20.3 | It's a formal word used to describe someone or something more |
| 0:23.7 | important, skillful, or successful than their counterparts or peers. It's used synonymously with the |
| 0:30.1 | words, Outstanding and Supreme. Here's the word used, and a sentence from foreign affairs. In this |
| 0:37.2 | warmly engaging intellectual biography, Vioti traces the life and ideas of Kenneth Walz, |
| 0:44.1 | a preeminent figure in post-World War II International Relations Scholarship. |
| 0:49.3 | What is noteworthy about the following sentence? |
| 0:52.3 | Mount Kilimanjaro is a prominent eminence on the Tanzanian landscape. |
| 0:58.4 | You very likely recognized two words that are closely related to preeminent, prominent and eminence. |
| 1:05.7 | All three words are rooted to the Latin verb stem minare, which is taken to mean to stand out, though there is no |
| 1:13.0 | record of its use without a prefix. |
| 1:15.6 | Mount also deserves an honorable mention. |
| 1:19.0 | It comes from the Latin Mont or Monse, meaning mountain, which is understood to share a common |
| 1:25.0 | ancestor with Minare. |
| 1:27.1 | Mount leads us in turn to paramount, |
| 1:30.2 | a word closely related in meaning to preeminent. With your word definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups. |
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