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Word of the day
Word of the Day: placate
This word has appeared in 126 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Cindy Lozito
By
The Learning Network
April 29, 2026,
2:00 a.m. ET
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placate \ ˌpleɪˈkeɪt \ verb
: cause to be more favorably inclined; gain the good will of
Listen to the pronunciation.
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The word
placate
has appeared in 126 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Feb. 11 in “
Champagne, Concierges and Emergency Sand: How the Ultra-Rich Travel
,” by Sarah Lyall. In the article, Jack Ezon, who created and runs a “luxury travel advisory,” describes some of the challenges of planning vacations for “people who glide through life unburdened by the notion that there are things they cannot do or items they cannot have”:
Once, to
placate
a client panicking because a monsoon had washed away the beach around the $40,000-a-night villa he had booked in the Seychelles, Mr. Ezon arranged to have an emergency shipment of sand brought in. Another time, he said, he arranged to have wall-to-wall carpeting installed in a 225-foot yacht his clients had chartered for $750,000 a week because the wife “didn’t want to take her stilettos off,” he said — and the yacht owners did not want anything damaging the wooden decks.
“There are no boundaries,” he said. “Think of the craziest thing you can think of. We’ll do it.”
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word
placate
in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
If you want a better idea of how
placate
can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples
on Vocabulary.com
. You can also visit
this guide
to learn how to use IPA symbols to show how different words are pronounced.
If you enjoy this daily challenge, try our
vocabulary quizzes
.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
The Word of the Day is provided by
Vocabulary.com
. Learn more and see usage examples across a range of subjects in the
Vocabulary.com Dictionary
. See every Word of the Day in
this column
.
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