Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day - dyspeptic
简介
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 25, 2025 is: dyspeptic \diss-PEP-tik\ adjective
Dyspeptic is a formal and old-fashioned word used to describe someone who is bad-tempered (in other words, easily annoyed or angered), or something that shows or is characteristic of a bad temper. The noun form of dyspeptic is dyspepsia.
// The comedian’s shtick of delivering dyspeptic rants on the daily annoyances of modern life was enormously popular.
[See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dyspepsia)
Examples:
“Statler and Waldorf from ‘The Muppet Show’ made a long-running joke of dyspeptic critics. Never once in my teenage years did I point to the TV and say, ‘Mom and Dad, that is what I want to be when I grow up.’” — Charles McNulty, The Los Angeles Times, 4 Dec. 2024
Did you know?
If you’ve ever told someone (or been told yourself) to “quit [bellyaching](https://bit.ly/426fw2w),” then you should have no trouble grokking the gastronomic origins of dyspeptic, an adjective used in formal speech and writing to describe someone with a bad temper. To wit, indigestion (aka [dyspepsia](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dyspepsia)) is often accompanied by nausea, heartburn, and gas—symptoms that can turn even your cheeriest chum into a [curmudgeonly](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curmudgeon) crank. So it’s no wonder that dyspepsia can refer both to a sour stomach and a sour mood, or that its adjective form, dyspeptic, can describe someone afflicted by either. The pep in both words comes from the Greek pep-, base of the verb péptein meaning “to cook, ripen, or digest.”