Word of the day · Sunday, November 8, 2026

quench

verb

To put out a fire or a light, to satisfy thirst, or to cool hot metal quickly in water or oil to harden it.

Where it comes from

Old English acwencan, to extinguish.

Worth knowing

Quenching steel locks its structure in a hard but brittle state. Smiths then reheat it gently, called tempering, to trade a little hardness for toughness.

By the letters

• 6letters
• 2vowels (A E I O U)
• Quncommon letters
• 6different letters

Playing it

QUENCH uses the Q with its usual U partner and ends in the -NCH cluster, which also closes BENCH, PINCH and LUNCH.

In Unsaid

QUENCH was word of the day number 21 in Unsaid, a falling-letter word game where every player gets the same word on the same date. As a word it scores 950 points. Under the current rules, spelling it as the word of the day is worth a bonus of 9,900 reading down or 7,425 reading across, before any streak. How the bonus works.