GRE Vocab: Holiday Hangover
Yes, the holidays have come and gone. Welcome to 2014! But having spent the last month listening to Christmas music non-stop, I have lots of these songs still stuck in my head. Whether or not you celebrate Christmas, these songs are around this time of year and tend to plant themselves in our minds. So if they’re stuck in your head too, there’s a good chance to learn a little vocab!
Here are seven examples of GRE words in holiday songs. If you find others, share them in the comments!
(1) Terrific. Here’s one of those words that the GRE likes to use for its less-conventional meaning. We usually think of terrific as “great”, but it really means “awesome” in the literal sense: big and awe-inducing, often in a bad or scary way. Like the word “terror”. To be honest, I can only think of one popular culture use of “terrific” in this way, and that’s in “Home for the Holidays,” which tells us, “…from Atlantic to Pacific, gee the traffic is terrific!”
(2) Conspire. In “Winter Wonderland,” the singer says, “Later on, we’ll conspire as we dream by the fire.” So picture the couple in the song, chatting away and planning for the new year. To conspire is to make secret plans together, although those plans are to do something bad… maybe that song is a bit naughtier than the sing-song tone would have us believe.
(3) Incarnate. “Incarnate” means given a body or shape, and it’s usually easiest to remember by thinking of the more-frequently-used “incarnation”. But you could also think of the lyrics to “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”, which implore the listener to “hail the incarnate deity” when telling the story of the first Christmas.
(4) Cloven. The song “It Came upon a Midnight Clear” is full of great vocab, but one of the best words in “cloven”, which means “cut in two”. We mostly hear this word describing “cloven hooves” – or hooves that are split in the middle, such as those of a cow. The song speaks of angels coming to earth and says, “through the cloven skies they come”, describing the sky breaking in two.
(5) Traverse. “Traverse” means to move to travel across something. “We Three Kings” begins, “We three kinds of Orient are bearing gifts we traverse afar.” And if you’ve always sung that as “travel afar”, you’re already all set on this one.
(6) Lament. To lament is to grieve or be sorrowful, often in a way that involves crying or wailing. In “Good Kind Wenceslas”, the king and his page are traveling “though the rude wind’s wild lament and the bitter weather.” That wailing of the winter wind is a great way to remember the word “lament”.
(7) Laud. We mostly hear “laud” used as a verb meaning “to praise or glorify,” but it is also a noun for the praise or glory that is given. It’s used in this way in “What Child is This,” which says, “Haste, haste to bring Him laud, the Babe, the son of Mary.”
There’s a point here far beyond these seven words: GRE vocab is everywhere. When you hear or read a word that you don’t know, look it up! You might find that you start noticing GRE vocab everywhere. And who knows – learning it might be, dare we say it, sort of fun.