This incredible post on Gawker catalogues the rather prodigious vocabulary displayed in Mariah Carey’s oeuvre.

The post does seem to be making fun of Carey a bit:

Her lyrics are littered with, as she might say, peculiar words that suggest she is a vocabulary booster enthusiast. She loves her some adverbs. The result is a body of words that are rarely, if ever, heard in pop music.

(What’s a “booster enthusiast”? Considering that one definition of booster — and the only definition that really applies to a person — is “enthusiast,” I think “booster enthusiast” is a bit redundant.)

In any case, I read over the entire list of lyrics, lyrics like:

“I can’t be elusive with you honey / ‘Cause it’s blatant that I’m feeling you”

“Do you care for me beyond idolization?”

“I had a crush on you / Painstakingly I would conceal the truth”

“Keep pressing on steadfastly”

“Thoughts run wild as I sit and rhapsodize”

“After so much suffering I finally found unvarnished truth”

“My defenses start to wane”

… and Mariah Carey is basically using those words correctly.

We think she’d do pretty well on the GRE! At least the verbal part.

Check out the entire list here.

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Check out the last sentence of this article about a pit bull attack:

Note that, in the top sentence captured above, the pit bull is “vicious.”

In the last line, it is “viscous.” NOT THE SAME WORD.

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If you’ve been feeling frustrated with the abstruse, opaque, even occult charts and tables on the GRE’s Data Interpretation section, you might find this amusing.

Click to enlarge.

To practice GRE charts and tables for real, see:

• Three sample questions with explanations, directly from ETS
• Data Interpretation is Really About Reading Carefully (Well, That and Percents!)
• GRE Data Interpretation for Hipsters

Grammarly.com claims to be the world’s most accurate online grammar checker. Interesting!

Fortunately, grammar is not tested on the GRE (as it is on the SAT and GMAT). However, Grammarly’s Facebook page is full of (that is, replete with) vocab learning and other word fun.

Do you know the meanings of agog, voracious, loquacious, frolicsome, tortuousness, and indelicate? Check out these explanations, then try a GRE problem at the bottom of the post.

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This amazing math wedding cake is from Pink Cake Box.

This past week, I was attempting to plan a wedding, and came across yet another “GRE math in real life” situation. (When you’re a GRE instructor, you tend to spot these quite often!)

I’m going to give you three different GRE math problems using the same real-life wedding scenario. Here goes!

Question 1: To hold a wedding at NYC Private Club costs $130 per person, including food and open bar. There is also a $500 ceremony fee and a 20% service charge, as well as 8.875% NYC tax on the entire bill. Which of the following represents the total cost C of a wedding at NYC Private Club as a function of the number of people, p?

A. C(p) = (130p + 500)(0.8)(91.125)
B. C(p) = (130p)(0.2)(1.08875) + 500
C. C(p) = (130p)(1.2)(0.08875) + 500
D. C(p) = 130p + 1.2p + 1.08875p + 500
E. C(p) = (130p + 500)(1.2)(1.08875)

Question 2: To hold a wedding at NYC Private Club costs $130 per person, including food and open bar. There is also a $500 ceremony fee and a 20% service charge, as well as 8.875% NYC tax on the entire bill. If a wedding at NYC Private Club cost, to the nearest dollar, $10,334, how many guests attended the wedding?

Question 3:

To hold a wedding at NYC Private Club costs $130 per person, including food and open bar. There is also a $500 ceremony fee and a 20% service charge, as well as 8.875% NYC tax on the entire bill.

A. Quantity A is greater.
B. Quantity B is greater.
C. The two quantities are equal.
D. The relationship cannot be determined from the information given.

Select your answers before reading any further! Read more

A common question regarding the GRE is how to improve on Reading Comp. Whether our problem is speed, comprehending the passages, or — a common complaint — narrowing the choices down to two and then picking the wrong one, RC difficulties are widespread (that is, ubiquitous).

Here’s my advice to a student’s question in the Forums:

The first thing to say is: You really do just have to read and think very fast to get a top score on the verbal GRE. To truly learn to read and process complex information more quickly could take a person years. Obviously, we don’t usually have that kind of time to prepare for the GRE. But for whatever reason, speed-comprehension is a skill being tested on this exam.

So, if speed is a serious problem, you might have to accept that you won’t really get to REALLY answer all the questions — you might want to answer all the vocab questions first, since they’re faster, and then go back and do all the shorter reading passages, leaving the longer passages for last. If you skip something, use the “mark” button, and pick a random answer just in case you don’t get a chance to come back.

(See also: Everything You Need to Know About GRE Time Management Part I and Part II.)

As for taking notes, personally I do not take notes when the passage is on a topic with which I am familiar. But if the passage is complex (usually science passages are, to me), I diagram, and even draw certain processes (for instance, I did a lovely sketch of spiral galaxy formation on one passage, with words and arrows indicating the meaning of that part of the passage). I also always diagram is a contrast is being presented so i can make a T-chart to help me keep track of which historians/scientists/etc. are on which “side.”

I also find that reading many, many GRE passages (you can also practice on books for the old GRE — the Reading Comp is basically the same — or on materials for the LSAT or GMAT) familiarizes you with certain topics and structures. I now know more about astronomy than I ever thought I would, and when I begin reading something about history, I’m always expecting the same evidence to get reinterpreted in a new light (I’d say I’ve become very familiar with the idea that historical and anthropological evidence is often interpreted by historians and anthropologists through the lens of their own time and culture).

An example — I was recently working with a student on a long, hard RC passage about a particular type of fish, and how it had evolved to have both its eyes on the same side of its head (and then there was a long description of the twisting of the optic nerves), and how these fish in some parts of the ocean have their eyes on the left side of their heads, and in other parts, on the right side. The passage investigated what the evolutionary advantage could be to having both of one’s eyes on the left side versus the right side. (A good question! What on earth COULD be the advantage to such an adaptation? Do sharks always attack from the left or something? Ha.)
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Take a sneak peek into Manhattan Prep’s 500 Essential Words and 500 Advanced Words GRE flashcard sets!

Turns out, metaphysical doesn’t just mean “really deep, man.” And let’s not even talk about ontological and empirical. Check it out:

Want to adopt 1,000 new flashcards? Visit our store here.

Mnemonics or mnemonic devices are memory tricks to help us remember things like vocabulary words. However, many mnemonics are pretty cheesy — often involving the kind of jokes some people call “groaners.” For instance…

Disingenuous means, “insincere; lacking in frankness or candor; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous.”

Here’s the mnemonic:

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The following, by Jeff Brechlin, is the winning entry from a Washington Post Style Invitational contest that asked readers to submit “instructions” for something in the style of a famous person.

Here is Shakespeare’s Hokey Pokey.

For the benefit of our international students, the “Hokey Pokey” is a silly dance for children that goes something like this:

You put your [right leg] in,
You put your [right leg] out;
You put your [right leg] in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the hokey pokey,
And you turn yourself around.
That’s what it’s all about!

A different part of the body is referenced in each verse (so, the song can go on for kind of a long time).

The Shakespearean version contains some antiquated words that wouldn’t appear on the GRE (“anon” means soon, quickly), but also some very excellent GRE words:

Lithe – bending readily; pliant; limber; supple; flexible: the lithe body of a ballerina.

Wanton – Done, shown, used, etc., maliciously or unjustifiably (a wanton attack; wanton cruelty); without regard for what is right, just, humane, etc.; careless; reckless; sexually lawless or unrestrained (wanton lust); extravagantly or excessively luxurious (Kanye West’s Tweets about how fur pillows are actually hard to sleep on might indicate a wanton lifestyle). Basically, wanton can mean lacking restraint in a number of ways.

Yoke – a device for joining together a pair of draft animals, especially oxen, usually consisting of a crosspiece with two bow-shaped pieces, each enclosing the head of an animal; a frame fitting the neck and shoulders of a person, for carrying a pair of buckets or the like, one at each end; an agency of oppression, subjection, servitude, etc.

Here’s a yoke pictured on Wikipedia:

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Thinking of taking one of our 9-session GRE classes? Here’s one benefit of our classes that we don’t mention anywhere else on our website, and that sometimes takes our students by surprise—when we give you a list of 49 words to learn every week (that’s 7 per day), we also follow up with a vocabulary email using those 7 words in context.

Here’s an example of the vocabulary emails our course students receive every day.

Dear Students,

Not long ago I was working as a private eye when a SLIGHT young man came in asking for my help. He was so emaciated, enervated, and lacking in VIGOR, in fact, that it looked as though he hadn’t eaten for a week, although he had just enough energy to twitch nervously.

I don’t mean to be PRESUMPTUOUS, he said in a peculiar accent, but this case is more important than anything you could possibly be moiling over and I just know you’ll be my detective.

Well, then, I said, a bit ruffled. Cut the drama — tell me EXPLICITLY what the case is about.

He began his story. He had been working as a busboy, clearing dishes from a table of pugnacious-looking women when one of the women shrieked and began grabbing at his apron. He scuttled back into the kitchen, only to find the women at his apartment door the next morning. He ran. He had been running ever since. It was a verisimilar tale.

Just then, a terrible FRACAS erupted on the street below my office. That was always happening back in my private eye days “ just as I’d sit down with the paper and a nice cigar, some petty criminal would run off with an old lady’s purse or a bunch of bananas and cause a din down below that scotched my equanimity. Anyway, this young man looked terrified. They’ve found me! he cried, attempting to hide in my coat closet.

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