yen
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day
Merriam-Webster
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🗓️ 28 December 2025
⏱️ 1 minutes
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Summary
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 28, 2025 is:
yen • \YEN\ • noun
A yen is a strong desire, urge, or craving for something.
// After dinner, the family went out for ice cream to satisfy their yen for something sweet.
// Students with a yen to travel should consider studying abroad.
Examples:
“If you’ve got a yen for succulent, right-off-the-boat Maine sea scallops, now is the time to get them.” — Stephen Rappaport, The Bangor Daily News, 26 Mar. 2025
Did you know?
Although yen suggests no more than a strong desire these days (as in “a yen for a beach vacation”), at one time someone with a yen was in deep trouble: the first meaning of yen, used in the late 19th century, was an intense craving for opium. The word comes from yīn-yáhn, a combination of yīn, meaning “opium,” and yáhn, “craving,” in the Chinese language used in the province of Guangdong. In English, the Chinese syllables were translated as yen-yen, and eventually shortened to yen.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Word of the Day podcast for December 28th. |
| 0:12.0 | Today's word is yen, spelled Y-E-N. |
| 0:15.6 | Yen is a noun. |
| 0:17.0 | A yen is a strong desire, urge, or craving for something. |
| 0:21.0 | Here's the word used in a a sentence from the banger, Daily News. |
| 0:25.3 | If you've got a yen for succulent right off the boat main sea scallops, now is the time to get them. |
| 0:32.2 | Although yen suggests no more than a strong desire these days, as in a yen for a beach vacation, |
| 0:39.2 | at one time someone with a yen was in deep trouble. The first meaning of yen used in the late |
| 0:45.7 | 19th century was an intense craving for opium. The word comes from yin-yan, a combination of |
| 0:52.9 | yin meaning opium and yon, in the Chinese language used in the province of Guangdong. |
| 0:59.8 | In English, the Chinese syllables were translated as yen, and eventually shortened to yen. |
| 1:06.3 | With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. |
| 1:13.1 | Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups. |
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