puissant

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 24, 2026 is:

puissant • \PWISS-unt\ • adjective

Puissant is a synonym of powerful used to describe something with puissance—that is, strength or power.

// The creatures in her fantasy novel are wielders of puissant magic, able to strike down enemies by harnessing the power of weather phenomena like lightning and tornadoes.

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Examples:

“The show is light on tech, but the accompanying images … pour through as addendums to Felder's puissant passion of Liszt's Liebesträume or Beethoven's Für Elise and land with great effect.” — David John Chávez, The Mercury News (San Jose, California), 1 Feb. 2026

Did you know?

Puissant has some powerful ties to some more commonplace English words. Although puissant has a considerably fancier feel than power and potent, all three words share the same Latin ancestor: posse, a verb meaning “to be able.” Potent came from potent-, potens, a form of posse. Power came to us by way of Anglo-French poer, which itself comes from an alteration of posse. From poer also came the Anglo-French adjective pussant, meaning “able” or “powerful,” and English speakers borrowed that to form puissant in the 15th century.