Today’s the day! That is, it’s the perfect day for clarifying the difference between choose and elect! To choose something is to select it from a number of possibilities. This is a very common and general verb that is unlikely to call to mind any specific situation or action. The verb elect, on the other hand, suggests the formal action of voting someone into office. Elect does have more general senses referring to picking something out (a first-year college student might elect one class over another to satisfy a requirement), but as a member of the civically inclined word family including electoral and election, the primary meaning elect calls to mind relates to governmental processes.

We won’t leave you guessing about today’s word: the verb conjecture means “to conclude or suppose from grounds or evidence insufficient to ensure reliability.” If you guess what’s going to happen, you may be risking an opinion on something about which you know nothing or very little. If you conjecture an outcome, you are drawing conclusions based on available information, with the understanding that the information is partial. While neither of these terms deals in certainty, the latter suggests a more reasoned approach to determining what's probable.

The adjective audacious takes boldness to the extreme—and sometimes that’s a good thing. When used to describe an idea, goal, or plan, audacious usually suggests inventiveness and originality. But sometimes audacious is used to suggest brazen insolence and reckless defiance of convention, property, or law. An audacious lie, for instance, is an egregious and insidious falsehood delivered without shame.