tenuous
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
Merriam-Webster
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🗓️ 15 June 2026
⏱️ 2 minutes
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Summary
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 15, 2026 is:
tenuous • \TEN-yoo-us\ • adjective
Something described as tenuous is flimsy, weak, or uncertain.
// The theater had a tenuous existence for years, but today is on much more solid financial footing.
Examples:
“While more non-screen-based interactive technology could be an antidote to our screen-obsessed society, it’s an extremely tenuous link to more human interaction ...” — Jennifer Pattinson Tuohy, The Verge, 4 May 2026
Did you know?
Lean into the history of tenuous and you’ll find that the word comes to English from the Latin adjective tenuis, meaning “fine-drawn, thin, narrow, or slight,” and is a relative of thin. Like that more familiar word, tenuous has a wide array of meanings: it can describe a literal thinness, as in “a silkworm’s tenuous threads,” or rarity (the opposite of density), as in “a tenuous fluid,” or it can describe things that are figuratively thin or flimsy. If one team in a game has a tenuous lead, either team still has a chance at winning. If there is only a tenuous connection between two events, those events are likely unrelated.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the word of the day for June 15th. |
| 0:12.0 | Today's word is tenuous, spelled T-E-N-U-O-U-S. Tenuous is an adjective. Something described as tenuous is flimsy, weak, or uncertain. Here's the |
| 0:23.6 | word used in a sentence from The Verge. While more non-screen-based interactive technology could be |
| 0:30.0 | an antidote to our screen-obsessed society, it's an extremely tenuous link to more human interaction. |
| 0:38.2 | Lean into the history of tenuous, and you'll find that the word comes to English from the Latin adjective tenuis, meaning fine, drawn, thin, narrow, or slight. |
| 0:50.1 | And is a relative of the word thin. |
| 0:53.1 | Like that more familiar word, tenuous has a wide array of meanings. |
| 0:58.4 | It can describe a literal thinness as in a silkworm's tenuous threads, or rarity, the opposite of |
| 1:06.3 | density, as in a tenuous fluid, or it can describe things that are figuratively thin or flimsy. |
| 1:14.2 | If one team in a game has a tenuous lead, either team still has a chance at winning. |
| 1:21.0 | If there is only a tenuous connection between two events, those events are likely unrelated. |
| 1:27.3 | With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. |
| 1:33.6 | Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups. |
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