Jump to content

Wiktionary:Word of the day/Nominations

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Shortcuts:
WT:FWC
WT:WOTDN
Note: Use the talk page only for comments about this page. Nominate words below.

This page is for nominating future Word of the Day entries. The philosophy behind our WOTD feature is similar to that of Wikipedia’s featured articles. The main goals are:

  1. to highlight the best of Wiktionary’s content by featuring it on the Main Page,
  2. to nurture people’s interest in unusual words and phrases
  3. to help readers improve their vocabulary.

Nominate a new word

What to nominate

Any interesting English word or phrase that appears in Wiktionary may be nominated for WOTD, including both rare and exotic terms and terms that are used in everyday conversation.

Variety

Before nominating a word, you might want to look through our category of past Words of the Day and at the word’s page itself to make sure it (or a variation of it) hasn’t already been featured.

Also keep in mind that featured words are chosen to reflect a variety of:

  • parts of speech — Nouns, verbs and adjectives should appear more or less equally, but we also need good adverbs, idioms, set phrases and the like.
  • languages of origin — Many English words derive ultimately from Latin or Greek precursors, but English has borrowed from, and styled itself after, many other languages, so try to mix it up a bit.

What not to nominate

These are in addition to the other warnings already mentioned above.

  • No “redlinks” (missing pages) — If a word is not yet in Wiktionary, it belongs at Wiktionary:Requested entries, not here. (Better yet, why not create the entry yourself?)
  • No offensive words — Please avoid profanity. A nominated word should not offend the average person, nor should it be something you would be embarrassed to use in front of your boss or your grandmother (or your boss’s grandmother, for that matter). Wiktionary defines offensive words in part so people know not to use them in polite company. WOTD nominations, on the other hand, should be words that people can safely use in everyday speech. Note also that many parents and schools automatically filter out pages that include certain offensive words, so featuring such a word on the Main Page would restrict access to Wiktionary itself.
  • Avoid abbreviations — Abbreviations, initialisms, acronyms, symbols, and the like are unlikely to be selected without extremely convincing reasons. In other words, don’t nominate WYSIWYG, dpi, or ☿. Symbols in particular cause problems for readers who lack the required fonts, and are therefore unlikely to be featured.
  • Avoid proper nouns — Names of specific people, places, or entities are better suited to featuring in an encyclopedia. Such words rarely have interesting definitions or translations.
  • Stick to English — The featured word is an English term because this is the English Wiktionary. For foreign words and phrases see the Foreign Word of the Day.
  • No previous selections — We want to feature new selections, not the same selections over and over. Please check the list of previous Words of the Day, to be certain it has not been selected previously. In addition, you should see a little “previous WOTD” box in the top right-hand corner of any such entries.
  • Avoid other WOTDs — We want to feature words that haven’t been WOTDs for other dictionaries, partly to highlight unique terms that make Wiktionary so special, partly to avoid complaints (by preventing the possibility entirely) that WOTDs were “stolen” from other dictionaries.
  • Avoid purely obsolete words – Words whose definitions are only obsolete, archaic or similar should be avoided.

Updating guide

If you are familiar with using wikitext, please help update future Words of the Day! Do consider a quid pro quo – promoting one or two older nominations as Words of the Day for each new nomination that you make. Click on the “Expand” link below for a detailed guide on how to do this.

Click here for the guide
I.
Check if the nominated word meets the criteria.


Nominations are listed at “Latest nominations” and “Older nominations”. Check if the nominated word meets the criteria for appearing on the Main Page. Try to consider older nominations before more recent ones.

II.
Update the Word of the Day page.


  1. Go to the page for the day that you wish to update.
    For example, to set up a new Word of the Day for January 1, go to “Wiktionary:Word of the day/January 1”.
  2. Check the page history to see if the page has been recently updated. If it has been, pick a different day to update.
  3. If not, go ahead and update the {{WOTD}} template on the page. In the edit history, indicate the year that the new Word of the Day is scheduled to appear in.
    For example, if you intend the new word to appear on January 1, 2015, put “2015” in the edit history.
  4. Go to “Wiktionary:Word of the day/Status” and edit the page to indicate which days of the year have been updated.
III.
Archive the Word of the Day and the nomination.


  1. Go to the page of the word you have set as a Word of the Day, and apply {{was wotd}} at the top of the page.
    For example, if you have set interesting as the Word of the Day on January 1, 2015, go to “interesting” and insert “{{was wotd|2015|January|1}}” at the top of the page.
  2. After you have saved your edit, click on the WOTD link that now appears at the top of the page. A WOTD archive page will open. On that page, put a copy of the {{WOTD}} template that you just updated. (If the archive page does not exist yet, create it.)
    For example:
    1. After adding “{{was wotd|2015|January|1}}” to “interesting”, click on the link “WOTD – 1 January 2015” that appears on the top of the page.
    2. This will open the page “Wiktionary:Word of the day/Archive/2015/January”. Add a section heading in the format “== 1 ==”, where “1” is the day of the year, then under that add a copy of the {{WOTD}} template which you placed on the page “Wiktionary:Word of the day/January 1”.
  3. Next, go to “Wiktionary:Word of the day/Nominations § Latest nominations” or “Wiktionary:Word of the day/Nominations § Older nominations” and remove the nomination of the word you have set as a Word of the Day. Transfer the nomination to a suitable nomination archive page. Such archive pages are in the format “[[Wiktionary:Word of the day/Nominations/Archive [''year''] ]]”.
    For example:
    1. Go to “Wiktionary:Word of the day/Nominations § Latest nominations” and remove the nomination of the word which you set as the Word of the Day for January 1, 2015.
    2. Let us assume that the nomination was made in December 2014. Go to the nomination archive page “Wiktionary:Word of the day/Nominations/Archive 2014” and, under the appropriate section (which, in this case, would be “December 2014”), insert the nomination.
    3. Strike out the nomination using the tags <s> and </s>, and add a comment after the nomination stating the date when the word will appear as Word of the Day (such as “— set to appear on January 1, 2015”). Sign your comment with four tildes (“~~~~”).

How to nominate

Follow the Nominate a new word link below and add your word(s) to the top of the list. Please link your word to our page for it by typing {{wotd-nominee|EXAMPLE_WORD}} (be sure to get the capitalization right, and replace “EXAMPLE_WORD” with the word that you want to nominate). You might want to include a concise reason or justification for the nomination. A definition is not necessary since our page for the word should already contain a good definition.

In case there are questions about your word(s), it is imperative that you sign your nomination by adding four tildes (~~~~) at the end. (Although it is not required, you can quickly register for free if you don’t already have a username.)

Nominate a new word

Latest nominations

So that those setting the Word of the Day for future days may know what has already been done, anyone doing so should here indicate the last date for which a Word of the Day was set, or the first for which it wasn’t, and any relevant notes.

For a guide on how to set Words of the Day, see the “Updating guide” section above. You may also find these personal comments by EncycloPetey and -sche useful (click on the links).

Words have been set for the following dates:

Entries are in reverse chronological order, by date of nomination. Please add your word or words to the TOP of the list below and remember to sign each new entry by typing four tildes (~~~~)

General nominations

2025

Poor reason or not, it's a valid nomination, not used before. Unstruck. DonnanZ (talk) 00:14, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A good one for International Cat Day (8 August) - DonnanZ (talk) 16:08, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

Nominations for particular days

Nominate a word here if you think it is fitting for a particular day of the year, such as an anniversary of a notable person's birth or death, or the release of a notable book or film; a festival or holiday; and so on. As there are currently few volunteers working on this page, please nominate words well in advance of when you would like them to appear (preferably six months or more). Note that your nominated word may be featured on another day instead.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Other

  • 1st of any month:
    • [Add nomination here]
I used to operate a calender many years ago. DonnanZ (talk) 10:41, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Theme suggestion: silent letters.
    I don't know if this is actually interesting in a one-day-at-a-time format (as opposed to as a list that someone spends a few minutes reading and then moves on from); feel free to reject it; but if you like the idea, I'll try to flesh the entries out more. - -sche (discuss) 06:35, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@-sche: this sounds interesting. Did you have a particular month this year or next in mind? An additional [fun?] challenge for you would be to see if you can find suitable terms that also fit with significant days in that month; for example, for 14 February 2026 a term with a silent n that is suitable for Valentine's Day. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:53, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. After exploring various dates, the range I've found so far that has the most tie-ins would be: start the series on September 15th with democratically for the International Day of Democracy; subtle body or subtle on September 16th could optionally mention the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer because "the ozone layer is subtle, but it's there!"; I didn't find any tie-in for Sep 17 c or 18 d; Sep 19 could be pirate shirt or any other pirate word for International Talk Like a Pirate Day; Sep 20 halfpenny for economist Maurice Sauvé's birthday (I didn't say they were all well-known tie-ins, lol); no tie-in for Sep 21 g, 22 h, 23 i; Sep 24 juanitaite to mark the date its discoverer, Juanita Curtis, died; Sep 25 upright knight marking the day French knight Jean de Carrouges, who fought one of France's last legal duels against a man accused of raping his wife, died; Sep 26 could be scrum-half as the date English rugby scrum-half and MND fundraiser Rob Burrow was born; I didn't spot any tie-ins yet for Sep 27 m, 28 n, 29 o, 30 p, or Oct 1 q; Oct 2 could be Indian sarsaparilla to mark Indian independence figure Gandhi's birthday, an Indian holiday; and I didn't have time to look for tie-ins for the letters after that yet; I'll look later. (An alternative I may examine later is if we started with an a word on April 11th to do marijuana for 4/20.) - -sche (discuss) 21:47, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@-sche: oh, you don't want to do (almost) a whole month of these entries, like the whole of September 2025 or the whole of February 2026, starting from the first of the month? But starting a run from 15 September would also be fine. Of course, you don't have to find entries which fit all the significant days—just some of them would be great and already an impressive achievement! — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:08, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Older nominations

Note to administrators and interested editors: If you notice words that have already appeared as Words of the Day, or are in the queue to appear as they have been tagged with {{was wotd}}, please strike them out by using <s> and </s> HTML tags, and after a short time, a week or so, the nominations can be archived.

Archived nominations

2006 • 2007 • 2008 • 2009 • 2010 • 2011 • 2012 • 2013 • 2014 • 2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 • 2020 • 2021 • 2022 • 2023 • 2024 • 2025

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Word_of_the_day/Nominations&oldid=85568439"