fulminate

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 4, 2025 is: fulminate FULL-muh-nayt verb What It Means To fulminate is to complain loudly or angrily about something. // The editorial fulminated against the corruption in the state government that has been recently uncovered. cynosure in Context “When Reagan fulminated against the Soviet Union, his aides, fearing nuclear war, challenged him.” — Daniel Immerwahr, The New Yorker, 9 Sept. 2024 Did You Know? Lightning strikes more than once in the history of fulminate. The word comes from the Late Latin fulmināre, meaning “to strike down or confound (an opponent),” which in turn traces back to the Latin verb (same spelling) meaning “to strike” (used of lightning) or simply “to strike like lightning”; that word's source is the noun fulmen, meaning “lightning.” When fulminate was taken up by English speakers in the 15th century, it lost much of its ancestral thunder and was used largely as a technical term for the issuing of formal denunciations by church authorities. In time, its original lightning spark returned, and it’s now used when someone issues verbal “lightning strikes” in the midst of a brouhaha, tirade, or tweetstorm.