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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 17, 2026 is:
affable • \AF-uh-bul\ • adjective
Affable describes someone who is friendly and easy to talk to. It can also describe something, such as someone’s personality, that is characterized by ease and friendliness.
// The restaurant’s affable owner can be seen most nights welcoming his guests and making light conversation.
// In the hallways, the principal has an affable demeanor; however, when called to her office, students know she is all about business.
Examples:
“Ray Naranjo is a Native American chef from Santa Clara Pueblo in northern New Mexico. He’s a big, affable man with a wide, warm smile, built more for a football field than his food truck, Manko.” — Michael Shaikh, The Last Sweet Bite: Stories and Recipes of Culinary Heritage Lost and Found, 2025
Did you know?
There is nothing in the meaning of affable (“friendly and easy to talk to”), nor in its etymology (the word traces back to the Latin verb affārī, meaning “to speak to, address”), to suggest it is more properly applied to men than to women, but English-speaking people behave as though it is. This was not always true; in the 16th through the 19th centuries, it was not uncommon to see the word describing women, but no more. We once surveyed all the cases in which a single newspaper used affable over a 12-month period. The word occurred in 102 articles, and in 4 occurrences it described women, while in 85 occurrences it described men (in the other cases affable was used to describe a conga line, email, musical compositions by Robert Ward, cats in general, and one male dog). None of this need affect your use of the term. You should feel free to apply it in whatever way seems suitable. Think of this more as a reminder that the currents of our language are deep and occasionally mysterious, gently nudging us along paths we don’t even see.
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