Word of the day
Thursday, October 15, 2026
boggart
A shapeshifting monster that feeds on fear.
"A boogeyman," I said. "Sometimes known as a boggle or a boggart. It's a weak form of phobophage - a fear-eater, mostly insubstantial."
Where it comes from
Variant of boggard, recorded since 18th century. As a monster that feeds on fear, coined by British novelist J. K. Rowling in 1999 in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Adapted from the Wiktionary entry boggart (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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About these words
Every word here was chosen because it is real, documented and a little out of the ordinary: an old sailing term, a borrowed word with a good story, a coinage with a known inventor. We skip the usual lists of "beautiful words" and the common vocabulary that other sites recycle. The calendar holds 3,907 words, so none repeats for about 10 years.