German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, dies at the age of 66. A member of the Nazi Party, he ran an enamel-works factory in Krakow during the German occupation of Poland, employing workers from the nearby Jewish ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated, he persuaded Nazi officials to allow […]

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 9, 2025 is:

duress • \dur-RESS\  • noun

Duress, which is typically used with under, refers to force or threats meant to make someone do something. It is used especially of unlawful coercion.

// The defense asserts that the defendant’s confession was made under duress.

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Examples:

“Did you know that Toni [Morrison] also edited poetry? (What couldn’t she do!) Despite inexperience with the medium, Morrison was an early champion of the poet June Jordan. She published one of her earliest collections, Things I Do in the Dark, in 1977. In a 1975 letter, Morrison told Jordan that Random House would publish her work, but only under duress. ‘The answer they gave was “we would prefer her prose—will do poetry if we must,”’ she wrote. ‘Now I would tell them to shove it if that were me…’” — Brittany Allen, LitHub.com, 24 Apr. 2025

Did you know?

Duress is most often paired with the word under to refer to force or threats meant to make someone do something. For example, someone forced to sign a document signs it “under duress,” and a person held “under duress” is not free to leave but is being constrained, usually unlawfully. (Do not confuse being “under duress” with being “under stress,” which is a much more common occurrence.) Duress comes ultimately from the Latin adjective durus, meaning “hard,” source too of durable and endure.

By Christian J. Collier