Word of the day · Monday, October 26, 2026

meze

noun

A spread of small dishes served at the start of a meal or with drinks in Greek, Turkish, Levantine and Balkan cooking. Also spelled mezze.

Where it comes from

From Turkish meze, from Persian maze, taste or relish.

Worth knowing

A meze table might hold hummus, olives, stuffed vine leaves, grilled halloumi and pickles. The idea is shared plates and slow eating rather than one main course.

By the letters

• 4letters
• 2vowels (A E I O U)
• Zuncommon letters
• 3different letters

Playing it

MEZE puts a Z between two E's, which makes it easy to build from common letters. MEZES is also a word, so one more letter extends it.

Anagrams

Words that use exactly the same letters as MEZE. See anagram.

• mzee

Hooks

One letter added to make a new word (what is a hook), at the end: MEZES.

One letter away

Words you get by changing a single letter, the steps of a word ladder.

• maze
• meme
• mene
• mere
• mese
• mete
• meve
• mezz
• moze
• zeze

In Unsaid

MEZE was word of the day number 8 in Unsaid, a falling-letter word game where every player gets the same word on the same date. As a word it scores 300 points. Under the current rules, spelling it as the word of the day is worth a bonus of 8,600 reading down or 6,450 reading across, before any streak. How the bonus works.