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As Wikipedia's featured articles have proven time again, the best way to increase knowledge is through clear and uncluttered and uncluttered articles. Wictionary's Words of the Day are an attempt to enlist this educational phenomenon in order to demonstrate the best of Wiktionary's definitions, elicit lexical excitement, and ultimately help readers improve their vocabulary.
A nomination, first and foremost, should be unusual and exotic enough that it adds to readers' vocabularies. For example, the word the wouldn't work. It may have an interesting entry, but it's a staple found in every English speaker's lexicon.
On the other hand, a word shouldn't be so odd that the regular John Doe can't use it in everyday conversation. For all those dying to nominate antidisestablishmentarianism, we challenge you to use it in a legitimate sentence or find it in a legitimate book in your local library. The word should be one likely to be encountered in a newspaper or in literature.
WOTD aims to recognize the epitome of Wiktionary. Simply put, red-links are not. If a word is not yet in Wiktionary (which means it will be displayed as a redlink), it belongs not here but at Wiktionary:Requested articles instead of at WOTD. Better yet, why not create the article yourself?
Avoid profanity. WOTD is not a salad bowl of licentious bashing. A nomination should not offend the average people nor should it embarrass you to use in front of your boss or grandmother. Wiktionary defines profane words in part so people know not to use them in polite company; it doesn't recommend these words as utterances that should necessarily be said.
In addition, many parents and schools automatically filter out pages that include certain offensive words. Featuring such an offensive word would therefore restrict access to the main Wiktionary page, which is counter to the policy of inclusion.
Abbreviations, initialisms, acronyms, symbols, and the like are unlikely to be selected without extremely convincing reasons. In other words, don't nominate lol, AC, or ☿. Symbols in particular present display problems for many browsers, and are therefore unlikely to be featured.
As of now, words are selected through a mandate from the masses, not, as is commonly believed, from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Key criteria in the selection of featured words include (1) a nomination, and (2) variety. Variety applies to many aspects of the entries. The part of speech should vary, so that nouns, verbs, and adjectives appear more or less equally, and so that adverbs, idioms, phrases and the like appear regularly. The origin of the words should vary, so that they do not all come from Latin, Greek, and French. The initial letter should vary in accordance with the proportion of words in the language that begin with that letter, so that words beginning with P, S, and C will be the most common. Many other factors are considered besides.
Click Nominate a new word below, and add your word to the top of the list. Include a concise reason for the nomination. Additionally, 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 |