From the Daily Mail:

This article about the very important wedding of Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz — and the partners they left behind, including esrtwhile inamorata Satsuki Mitchell — contained some interesting vocabulary words.

Razzmatazz is “a flashy action or display intended to bewilder, confuse, or deceive; Ambiguous or evasive language; double talk; Ebullient energy; vim.”

(Read an entire post about “vim” here!)

Myriad means “constituting a very large, indefinite number; innumerable.” You can use it as an adjective or a noun, as in, “I have learned myriad GRE words!” or “I need to learn a myriad of these freaking GRE words!”

(For more words for “a lot,” see the post A Plethora of Words for a Plethora).

Minutiae is the plural of minutia, “a small or trivial detail.”

Other words for a small amount include iota and modicum.

Finally, fawnography isn’t exactly a word in the sense that it isn’t in dictionaries, but a person with a robust vocabulary should certainly understand that fawning is exhibiting affection or attempting to please (especially in a dog-like way), or seeking favor or attention by flattery and obsequious behavior. So, a fawnography is like a “sucking-up” biography.

Manhattan Prep’s blog is written by one of our real-live GRE instructors. She teaches in New York. To learn about Manhattan Prep’s classes, go here. To suggest a word or topic for the blog, email jen@manhattanprep.com.

From People magazine:

Keith Olberman’s “stentorian sarcasm can grow smug” (ooh, alliteration!), but he’s a “true political brawler.”

Stentorian means “very loud or powerful in sound,” but the word’s origin is much more interesting than that. In Greek mythology, Stentor was a herald for the Greek side in the Trojan War. Homer said his “voice was as powerful as fifty voices of other men”!

A brawler is simply a person who gets into brawls. A brawl is “a noisy quarrel, squabble, or fight; or a bubbling or roaring noise; a clamor.”

Similar to a brawl is a fracas, fray, mêlée, scuffle, altercation, or — if you are feeling very old-fashioned — fisticuffs or donnybrook.

Manhattan Prep’s blog is written by one of our real-live GRE instructors. She teaches in New York. To learn about Manhattan Prep’s classes, go here. To suggest a word or topic for the blog, email jen@manhattanprep.com.

In post from Damn You, Auto Correct!, a romantic moment is ruined by obscure math references:

The best definition I could find for topology is, “The mathematical study of the geometric properties that are not normally affected by changes in the size or shape of geometric figures. In topology, a donut and a coffee cup with a handle are equivalent shapes, because each has a single hole.”

If you’ve ever heard this word before, it might be in the context of a topographical map, which shows surface features such as mountain ranges, glaciers, and valleys.

This post introduced a similarly obscure word from theology:

Palingenesis has a couple of definitions:

Theology: The doctrine of transmigration of souls; spiritual rebirth through metempsychosis of Christian baptism

Biology: The repetition by a single organism of various stages in the evolution of its species during embryonic development.

This all makes sense if you know that palin is a Greek root meaning “again,” and genesis, of course, means birth or creation.

The root palin (not sure if there’s a connection to the former governor of Alaska) also occurs in palindrome, a word that can be read the same way forwards or backwards (Mom! Dad! Wow!) and palimpsest, parchment from which earlier writing has been removed to clear it for new writing.

Manhattan Prep’s blog is written by one of our real-live GRE instructors. She teaches in New York. To learn about Manhattan Prep’s classes, go here. To suggest a word or topic for the blog, email jen@manhattanprep.com.

According to Slate, fireworks suck:

The professional fireworks display is an exercise in pomposity, aggression, triumphalism, and hubris.

Pomposity, of course, is the noun form of pompous, “Characterized by excessive self-esteem or exaggerated dignity; pretentious.”

Triumphalism is “The attitude or belief that a particular doctrine, especially a religion or political theory, is superior to all others,” or “excessive celebration of the defeat of one’s enemies or opponents.”

Hubris is “Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance.”

The pyrotechnician”and, more importantly, his patron”intends to ornament the night sky beyond the powers of God himself. He means to inspire awe for little purpose other than to demonstrate his power. The first great fireworks nuts in the Western world were Peter the Great (who put on a five-hour show to celebrate the birth of his first son) and Louis XIV (who, with a specially equipped sundial, used them to tell time at Versailles).

A pyrotechnician (or pyrotechnist) is “a person skilled in the use and handling of fireworks.”

Fireworks are imperialist and, as we used to say in school, hegemonic. That they are popularly believed to be populist entertainment does not say much for the populace.

Hegemonic is the adjective form of hegemony, “The predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others.”

Populist means “of or relating to populism; appealing to the interests or prejudices of ordinary people.”

In other words, fireworks are an American way of showing off our aggressive military might, and defying nature by impressing people! Hmmn, I’m not sure that ornamenting things for no greater purpose than to inspire awe is all that iniquitous — don’t we regularly make buildings, and monuments, and works of art, and nightclub-appropriate garments for just that purpose?

Manhattan Prep’s blog is written by one of our real-live GRE instructors. She teaches in New York. To learn about Manhattan Prep’s classes, go here. To suggest a word or topic for the blog, email jen@manhattanprep.com.

From Damn You, Auto Correct!:

Ominous, of course, means “Menacing; threatening; of or being an omen, especially an evil one.”

Ominous could be said to be the antonym of auspicious, which means “attended by favorable circumstances; marked by success.”

I need to get my hearing aids checked! What I heard as the ominous sound of thunder was really the auspicious sound of the ice cream truck rumbling down the street!

The word propitious can be used in the same way as auspicious, meaning “presenting favorable circumstances.”

The blog Damn You, Auto Correct! posts screenshots of predictive text programs (mostly the iPhone’s Auto Correct) predicting very, very badly.

While most of the humor is related to people sending inappropriately lewd messages to their family members and coworkers (I wouldn’t recommend reading the site at work), sometimes some pretty good vocabulary words pop up! (I am an iPhone user, and I cannot tell you how many times the iPhone has assumed that, by typing “new” or “never,” what I really wanted was “neocolonialism.”)

Here is a classic:

A clepsydra is in fact a Greek water clock! Even more interestingly, clepsydra contains the root “kleps” (“to steal”), which also occurs in kleptomania, which means compulsive stealing.

If you think of the march of time as “stealing” moments of your life from you, then you could think of the clepsydra as “stealing” the water that marks time.

A few other time words you want to know for the GRE are:

Chronological – Arranged in order of time of occurrence.

Anachronism – The representation of someone as existing or something as happening in other than chronological, proper, or historical order.

Dilatory – Intended to delay; tending to postpone or delay.

Temporize – To act evasively in order to gain time, avoid argument, or postpone a decision.

Oh, and a horologium is a clock tower. Now you know!

Every year, your birthday gift to me is dilatory! I can recount in chronological order every time you have temporized to explain why, once again, your gift to me is “in the mail”!

This year, you finally realized that I do NOT like to receive games for the Wii (I think you just buy me those so you can play with them yourself), and that I actually like to receive anachronistic timepieces for my collection.

So, it’s nice that you found me a clepsydra on eBay, but honestly, I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m going to go pout in the horologium.

No, I know that my bedroom is not a real horologium, but that’s what I like to call it, since it’s full of hourglasses and sundials and it’s on the third floor.

“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.

Supplant means “take the place of, displace, especially through sneaky tactics.”

In the 1950s, many people took cod liver oil as a health supplement. Today, fish oil capsules and flaxseed oil have supplanted the smelly old standby our grandparents used.

He did achieve his dream of becoming CEO, but only after supplanting our previous CEO by wresting control while she was battling cancer.

Some related words are:
Outstrip (surpass, exceed; be larger or better than; leave behind)
Overshadow (cast a shadow over, make to seem less important)
Supersede (replace or cause to be set aside)
Eclipse (obscure, darken, make less important)

Supplant comes from the Latin for to trip up (planta meant the sole of the foot). To supplant something is like a more mature version of sticking your leg out into the aisle so someone falls on his face.

The same root, “planta”, appears in the foot condition plantar fasciitis.

“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.

To balk is to refuse to proceed or to do something.

At the company retreat, he reluctantly agreed to participate in the ropes course, but balked at walking over hot coals as a trust exercise.

A related — and more mild — word is demur (show reluctance or object, especially for moral reasons, as in, His colleagues wanted him to tell the client that their sales would double, but he demurred.)

Balk comes from a word for a beam or ridge “ when a horse or mule balks, it stops short and refuses to proceed. Occasionally, balk is used as a noun for an impediment, much like a beam or ridge, or a defeat.

Did you know that “eu” is the Greek root for “good”?

Here are some “eu-” words you probably already know:

• Euthanasia
• Eugenics
• Eulogy
• Euphemism

Here are some others you might enjoy:

• Euphony – Harmony or agreeableness of sound.
• Eupraxia – Normally coordinated muscle performance.
• Eupepsia – Good digestion.
• Eudaimonia – A state of happiness and flourishing, especially as understood by Aristotle and other ancient Greek philosophers.

This last word, eudaimonia, popped up recently in a Harvard Business Review post about living a meaningful life, mostly by eschewing consumerism.

The economy we have today will let you chow down on a supersize McBurger, check derivative prices on your latest smartphone, and drive your giant SUV down the block to buy a McMansion on hypercredit. It’s a vision of the good life that I call (a tiny gnat standing on the shoulders of the great Amartya Sen) hedonic opulence. And it’s a conception built in and for the industrial age: about having more. Now consider a different vision: maybe crafting a fine meal, to be accompanied by local, award-winning microbrewed beer your friends have brought over, and then walking back to the studio where you’re designing a building whose goal is nothing less than rivaling the Sagrada Familia. That’s an alternate vision, one I call eudaimonic prosperity, and it’s about living meaningfully well.

Of course, to understand this article, you would need to know the words hedonic and opulence.

Vocabulary is important! GRE students sometimes wonder, “Who uses all these words?” Nearly every published source worth reading, it turns out — not just the literary or liberal-arts ones.

Welcome to Visual Dictionary, a series of posts about words that are better expressed in pictures.

Countenance as a verb means “approve or tolerate.”

But countenance can also literally mean face or “facial expression,” as in Her countenance was familiar “ did we know each other?

The metaphorical meaning makes sense when you think about a similar expression: I cannot look you in the face after what you did. (We would usually say I cannot face you when the speaker is the guilty party).

I saw you cheating off my paper, and I can’t countenance cheating “ either you turn yourself in or I’ll report you.