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<font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 21, 2024 is:</font>
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<strong>noblesse oblige</strong> • \noh-BLESS-uh-BLEEZH\ • <em>noun</em><br />
<p><em>Noblesse oblige</em> refers to the idea that people who have high social rank or wealth should be helpful and generous to people of lower rank or to people who are poor.</p>
<p>// As the inheritor of a great fortune, he was raised to have a strong sense of <em>noblesse oblige</em>, not only volunteering and donating to charity, but advocating for structural change to address inequality.</p>
<p><a href="https://bit.ly/3UK16mJ">See the entry ></a></p>
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<strong>Examples:</strong><br />
<p>“As is usually the case, actual research reveals that the pair bond of the cardinal is not really sacrosanct. The ostensibly quaint couples we see regularly have a 20% divorce rate, which is of course better than our own, but they are not exactly swans. And while they are mated, they are generally monogamous, but <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polygyny">polygyny</a> is known. It is, however, usually observed in cases where the male of an adjacent territory goes missing or because an unmated female persists in foraging and remaining in a male’s territory. A strange form of <em>noblesse oblige</em>. It has not been determined whether these second pairings produce any offspring.” — Bill Chaisson, <em>The Eagle Times</em> (Claremont, New Hampshire), 20 Jan. 2024</p>
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<strong>Did you know?</strong><br />
<p>In a tale collected in 16th-century Germany, a noblewoman wonders why the hungry poor don’t simply eat <em>Krosem</em> (a sweet bread), her cluelessness <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prefigure">prefiguring</a> the later, much more famous quote attributed to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marie-Antoinette-queen-of-France">Marie Antoinette</a>: “let them eat cake.” The queen <a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake">never actually said that</a>, but we can think of the sentiment behind <em>noblesse oblige</em> as the quote’s opposite—something more like “let us bake them a cake since we own all the eggs/flour/sugar/etc.” In French, <em>noblesse oblige</em> means literally “nobility obligates.” It was first quoted in English in the early 19th century, before being used as a noun referring to the unwritten obligation of <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aristocrats">aristocrats</a> to act honorably and generously to others. Later, by extension, it also came to refer to the obligation of anyone who is in a better position than others—due, for example, to high office or celebrity—to act respectably and responsibly.</p>
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Examples:
“As is usually the case, actual research reveals that the pair bond of the cardinal is not really sacrosanct. The ostensibly quaint couples we see regularly have a 20% divorce rate, which is of course better than our own, but they are not exactly swans. And while they are mated, they are generally monogamous, but [polygyny](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polygyny) is known. It is, however, usually observed in cases where the male of an adjacent territory goes missing or because an unmated female persists in foraging and remaining in a male’s territory. A strange form of noblesse oblige. It has not been determined whether these second pairings produce any offspring.” — Bill Chaisson, The Eagle Times (Claremont, New Hampshire), 20 Jan. 2024
Did you know?
In a tale collected in 16th-century Germany, a noblewoman wonders why the hungry poor don’t simply eat Krosem (a sweet bread), her cluelessness [prefiguring](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prefigure) the later, much more famous quote attributed to [Marie Antoinette](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marie-Antoinette-queen-of-France): “let them eat cake.” The queen [never actually said that](https://www.britannica.com/story/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake), but we can think of the sentiment behind noblesse oblige as the quote’s opposite—something more like “let us bake them a cake since we own all the eggs/flour/sugar/etc.” In French, noblesse oblige means literally “nobility obligates.” It was first quoted in English in the early 19th century, before being used as a noun referring to the unwritten obligation of [aristocrats](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aristocrats) to act honorably and generously to others. Later, by extension, it also came to refer to the obligation of anyone who is in a better position than others—due, for example, to high office or celebrity—to act respectably and responsibly.](https://us-central1-podcastguru-217d6.cloudfunctions.net/gcf_get_image?image_url=https://merriam-webster.com/assets/mw/static/wod-rss-images/wotd_podcast_logo_2.jpg&width=300&height=300&api_key=xqFmUFX5BHLBTA){kind=logo}