Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 25, 2024 is: euphoria \yoo-FOR-ee-uh\ noun Euphoria refers to a feeling of great happiness and excitement. // The initial euphoria following their championship victory has since subsided. [See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/euphoria) Examples: “Ciara picked up the crown where it had landed. It was warm, but more than that, the metal seemed to pulse somehow, like it was a living thing with a heartbeat of its own. It almost buzzed in her hands and she felt a gentle euphoria, simply holding it.” — Juno Dawson, The Shadow Cabinet: A Novel, 2023 Did you know? Health and happiness are often linked, sometimes even in etymologies. Today euphoria generally refers to happiness, but it comes from euphoros, a Greek word that means “healthy.” Given that root, it’s unsurprising that in its original English uses euphoria was a medical term. A medical dictionary published in 1881 (The New Sydenham Society’s Lexicon of Medicine and the Allied Sciences), for example, defines euphoria as “well-being, or the perfect ease and comfort of healthy persons, especially when the sensation occurs in a sick person,” and the second edition of our own unabridged dictionary published in 1934 labels euphoria as a psychological term meaning “a sense of well-being and buoyancy.” The idea of buoyancy also connects to the word’s Greek roots: euphoros comes from a combination of the prefix [eu-](https://bit.ly/3XYhQrv), meaning “well” or “easily,” and the verb pherein, meaning “to bear.” Modern physicians still use the term, but euphoria has since entered everyday usage as a word for happy feelings so intense one feels borne aloft—that is, as if one is [floating on air](https://bit.ly/47I9LKI).