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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 11, 2026 is:
subterfuge • \SUB-ter-fyooj\ • noun
Subterfuge is a formal word that refers to the use of tricks to hide, avoid, or get something.
// They obtained the documents by subterfuge.
Examples:
“Despite her difficult childhood, Mavis [Gallant] persevered, through grit, bloody-mindedness, an absence of self-pity, and an ironic sense of humor. Lunch with her was always hilarious and often horrifying: the tales she told about her life exceeded in unlikely gruesomeness even her own fiction. She certainly had the ‘cold eye’ that Yeats recommended for writers, and she saw through subterfuge, no matter who was trying it on.” — Margaret Atwood, The New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2025
Did you know?
Though subterfuge is a synonym of deception, fraud, double-dealing, and trickery, there’s nothing tricky about the word’s etymology. English borrowed the word with its meaning from the Late Latin noun subterfugium, which in turn comes from the Latin verb subterfugere, meaning “to escape, evade.” That word combines the prefix subter-, meaning “secretly” (from the adverb subter, meaning “underneath”) with the verb fugere, which means “to flee” and which is also the source of words such as fugitive and refuge, among others.
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