Yesterday was National Word Nerd Day. I missed posting about it because I was too busy celebrating. Here are three ways I honored my linguistic skills:
🤓 I picked my 2026 Word of the Year: Clarity. Clarity is so essential in messaging, copywriting, and storytelling because words matter. To that end, I continue to offer my clients web copy, email marketing campaigns, blog posts, and more that are free from jargon and speak directly to their target audience in a way that resonates. Clarity is also what I continue to work on in my professional and personal life. But that is a post for another day.
📅 I bought myself a desk calendar titled 365 New Words A Year. Each day highlights a different word, its definition, origin, and an example in a sentence. There is also some fun trivia, which I always enjoy. Honestly, only a word nerd like me would geek out about this little gift.
(Side note: The word for January 7th was collude: to work together secretly, especially to do something illegal or dishonest. Given the national events of that day, I wonder if this calendar is a little psychic too.)
🧩 I start every day with coffee and the NYT games app. Yesterday, I got the Wordle in 5 guesses (it was a hard one!); did the Crossword in 20 minutes; and the Mini Crossword in a minute and a half. I love word games. In the old days, I was great at Boggle, and Scrabble remains a personal favorite. As a writer, doing these puzzles makes for the perfect warm-up to my day.
Did you choose your word of the year? What is it?
John Hadley
January 10, 2026 at 12:46 pm (2 weeks ago)Elisa: Hooray for word nerds! Two I do almost every day (in addition to Connections) are Crosswordle and PairDown.
Elisa Heisman
January 10, 2026 at 1:40 pm (2 weeks ago)I’ve tried Connections, but it just doesn’t do it for me. There is a certain kind of thinking that goes into those four groups that I can’t seem to access. I’ll have to check out PairDown. I haven’t experienced that one yet. Thanks for commenting!