Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 18, 2023 is: raconteur \ra-kahn-TER\ noun

A raconteur is someone who excels in telling [anecdotes](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anecdote).

// A [bona fide](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bona%20fide) raconteur, Paola can turn even mundane experiences into hilariously entertaining stories.

[See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/raconteur)

Examples:

“He [filmmaker and author [Kenneth Anger](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kenneth-Anger)] lit and shot and cut images so that no matter how beautiful each was on its own, you had to ingest the totality like a potion and let it do its work if you wanted to get anything out of it. Most viewers weren’t interested in his kind of visual poetry, recognizing him mainly as a raconteur.” — Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 27 May 2023

Did you know?

If you’re a sage of sagas, a bard of ballads, or a pro in prose, you may have lost count of the accounts you’ve recounted. Some might call you a recounter, but as a master of narrative form you may find that recounter lacks a certain [je ne sais quoi](https://bit.ly/4a0OTzd). Sure, it has a cool story—it traces back to the Latin verb computere, meaning “to count”—but so do many words: compute and computer, count and account, and neither last nor least, raconteur, a [singsong](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/singsong) title better fit for a whimsical storyteller. English speakers borrowed raconteur from French in the early 19th century.