vamoose
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
Merriam-Webster
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🗓️ 7 November 2025
⏱️ 2 minutes
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Summary
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 7, 2025 is:
vamoose • \vuh-MOOSS\ • verb
Vamoose is an informal word that means "to depart quickly."
// With the sheriff hot on their tails, the bank robbers knew they had better vamoose.
Examples:
"... I spotted the culprit, a young racoon, attempting to dislodge one of my feeders. Caught in the act, he ran for his life when I opened the window and told him to vamoose." — Margaret Haylock Capon, The Picton County Weekly News (Ontario, Canada), 19 June 2025
Did you know?
In the 1820s and '30s, the American Southwest was rough-and-tumble territory—the true Wild West. English-speaking cowboys, Texas Rangers, and gold prospectors regularly rubbed elbows with Spanish-speaking vaqueros in the local saloons, and a certain amount of linguistic intermixing was inevitable. One Spanish term that caught on with English speakers was vamos, which means "let's go." Cowpokes and dudes alike adopted the word, at first using a range of spellings and pronunciations that varied considerably in their proximity to the original Spanish form. But when the dust settled, the version most American English speakers were using was vamoose.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the word of the day for November 7th. |
| 0:12.0 | Today's word is Vamuse, spelled V-A-M-O-O-S-E. Vamus is a verb. |
| 0:19.0 | Vam-U-M-U-S-E is an informal word that means to depart quickly. Here's the word used in a |
| 0:23.7 | sentence from the Picton County Weekly News. I spotted the culprit, a young raccoon, attempting to |
| 0:30.2 | dislodge one of my feeders. Caught in the act, he ran for his life when I opened the window and |
| 0:36.1 | told him to Vamus. |
| 0:45.6 | In the 1820s and 30s, the American Southwest was rough and tumble territory, the true wild west. |
| 0:56.1 | English-speaking cowboys, Texas Rangers, and gold prospectors regularly rubbed elbows with Spanish-speaking vaceros in the local saloons, |
| 1:00.2 | and a certain amount of linguistic intermixing was inevitable. |
| 1:06.2 | One Spanish term that caught on with English speakers was Vamos, which means let's go. |
| 1:12.8 | Cowpox and dudes alike adopted the word, at first using a range of spellings and pronunciations, |
| 1:17.0 | that varied considerably in their proximity to the original Spanish form. |
| 1:22.7 | But when the dust settled, the version most American English speakers were using was Vamuse. |
| 1:25.2 | With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sakulowski. |
| 1:35.7 | Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups. |
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