Word of the day · Wednesday, October 21, 2026

vezir

noun

A variant spelling of vizier, a senior minister or adviser in the Ottoman Empire and several earlier states of the Middle East and Central Asia.

Where it comes from

From Turkish vezir, from Arabic wazir, often explained as one who carries the burden of rule for the sovereign.

Worth knowing

The Grand Vizier ran the Ottoman government day to day. In chess, the queen descends from a piece once called the vizier or counselor, which moved only one square diagonally before the modern rules arrived in the late 1400s.

By the letters

• 5letters
• 2vowels (A E I O U)
• V, Zuncommon letters
• 5different letters

Playing it

VEZIR packs a V and a Z into five letters with only two vowels. Players who know VIZIER often miss that VEZIR and VIZIR are accepted spellings too.

One letter away

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

• vizir

In Unsaid

VEZIR was word of the day number 3 in Unsaid, a falling-letter word game where every player gets the same word on the same date. As a word it scores 570 points. Under the current rules, spelling it as the word of the day is worth a bonus of 9,140 reading down or 6,855 reading across, before any streak. How the bonus works.