2025-12-22: Merriam-Webster WOTD (Word Of The Day): Temporize

Dec 22, 2025 07:07 PM EST, Mon

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day for Dec 22 is “temporize”:

WORD OF THE DAY

December 22, 2025

temporize

verb TEM-puh-ryze

What It Means

To temporize is to avoid making a decision or giving a definite answer in order to have more time.

// Pressured by voters on both sides of the issue, the congressman temporized.

See the entry >

Examples

“The question is, Did you eat the last piece of pie? And the politician who ate the last piece of pie doesn’t want to say yes, because they might get in trouble. Doesn’t want to say no, because that’s an outright lie. So they waver, they equivocate, they temporize, they put things in context, and they talk like a politician.” — David Frum, The Atlantic (The David Frum Show podcast), 21 May 2025

Did you know?

Temporize comes from the Middle French word temporiser, which in turn likely traces back via Medieval Latin temporizāre, “to delay,” to the Latin noun tempus, meaning “time.” Tempus is also the root of such words as tempo, contemporary, and temporal. If you need to buy some time, you might resort to temporizing, but you probably won’t win admiration for doing so, as the word typically carries a negative connotation. For instance, a political leader faced with a difficult issue might temporize by talking vaguely about possible solutions without actually doing anything. The point of such temporizing is to avoid taking definitive—and possibly unpopular—action, in hopes that the problem will somehow go away.

Jen’s version: What Trump really means by “‘two weeks’”; Plus, what is the ‘Trump doctrine’?

“Today’s WOTD, temporize, is on full display in Jen Psaki’s ‘Redo’ of the day’s briefing. Where the original briefing leaned on delay and deflection, Psaki answers the same questions without the two‑week fog. The contrast is a clean demonstration of what it looks like when someone stops temporizing and actually answers.”

Jun 20, 2025 #trump [#israel #iran Jen Psaki offers her own, more honest answers to questions asked in today’s White House press briefing, touching on subjects like Donald Trump’s habitual use of “two weeks” as a way of pushing off decisions, and what really defines the “Trump doctrine.” For more context and news coverage of the most important stories of our day click here: https://www.msnbc.com/

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