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Oct 22, 2026
This week’s theme
Z in the spotlight

This week’s words
zillionaire
spizzerinctum
zazzy
pizzazz

pizzazz
Chocolat Klaus, 1903
Art: Leonetto Cappiello

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pizzazz

PRONUNCIATION:
(puh-ZAZ) Listen to pronunciation

MEANING:
noun: Flair, flamboyance, or vitality.

ETYMOLOGY:
Origin unknown. Earliest documented use: 1930s. Also spelled pizazz.

NOTES:
This is a word so inherently flamboyant it demands four Zs where one or two would have sufficed. Packing four Zs into a seven-letter frame makes it a typographic marvel that practically wears sequins on the page. Fashion editor Diana Vreeland helped popularize the word in the 1930s.

USAGE:
“A new breed of e-merchants tries to bring pizzazz to dull goods.”
The Direct Approach; The Economist (London, UK); Sep 11, 2021.

See more usage examples of pizzazz in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. -Doris Lessing, novelist, poet, playwright, Nobel laureate (22 Oct 1919-2013)

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