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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 14, 2022 is:




gloss • \GLAHSS\  • verb

Gloss means "to provide a brief explanation of a difficult or obscure word or expression" or, generally, "to explain or interpret."

// The text of the book is relatively jargon-free and most of the technical vocabulary has been glossed.

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Examples:

"Glossing the process, [Janelle Shane] told me, 'As the algorithm generates text, it predicts the next character based on the previous characters—either the seed text, or the text it has generated already.'"— Jacob Brogan, Slate, 9 May 2017





Did you know?

The verb gloss, referring to a brief explanation, comes from Greek glôssa, meaning "tongue," "language," or "obscure word." There is also the familiar phrase gloss over, meaning "to deal with (something) too lightly or not at all." That gloss is related to Germanic glosen, "to glow or shine," and comes from the noun gloss, which in English can refer to a shine on a surface or to a superficial attractiveness that is easily dismissed.