Suffragist organizers hold the first-ever National Women’s Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts on October 23, 1850.   More than 1,000 delegates from 11 states arrived for the two-day conference, which had been planned by members of the Anti-Slavery Society. The convention followed the steps laid out at the landmark Seneca Falls Convention two years before: “In entering […]

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 23, 2025 is:

litany • \LIT-uh-nee\  • noun

Litany usually refers to a long list of complaints, problems, etc. It can also refer to a sizable series or set, a lengthy recitation, a repetitive chant, or a particular kind of call-and-response prayer.

// Among the television critic’s litany of complaints about the new series is the anachronistic costume design.

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Examples:

“Out spilled the litany of all the names of all the things you thought I still feared: A big, bad wolf, a two-headed snake, a balding hyena, a beast dropped from the sky, an earthquake, a devil with red bells around its neck. Your words were steady, steeped in the old stories, but my eyes flicked to the window, unafraid. I was too old for easy monsters.” — Raaza Jamshed, What Kept You?: Fiction, 2025

Did you know?

How do we love the word litany? Let us count the ways. We love its original 13th century meaning, still in use today, referring to a call-and-response prayer in which a series of lines are spoken alternately by a leader and a congregation. We love how litany has developed in the intervening centuries three figurative senses, and we love each of these as well: first, a sense meaning “repetitive chant”; next, the “lengthy recitation” sense owing to the repetitious—and sometimes interminable—nature of the original litany; and finally, an even broader sense referring to any sizeable series or set. Though litanies of this third sort tend to be unpleasant, we choose today to think of the loveliness found in the idea of “a litany of sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”

By Christian J. Collier