Take a sneak peek into Manhattan Prep’s 500 Essential Words and 500 Advanced Words GRE flashcard sets!

When writing these cards, we wanted to make sure that everyone could get something out of every card — even if you already know the word on the front. So, you may know martinet, but do you know doctrinaire, hawk and the real meaning of chauvinist? Read more

I came across 18th century poet William Cowper in the Slate article “Why are William Cowper’s poems so witty?”

For instance, this one (source):
Read more

It’s been awhile since we’ve done a Visual Dictionary post, but let’s take on the word turgid:

Turgid (adj)
1. swollen; distended; tumid.
2. inflated, overblown, or pompous; bombastic: turgid language.

What would you describe as turgid (or its synonym, tumid)?

Reader Thomas M. writes:

“My withering tomato plants became turgid and vibrant after yesterday’s rain. An heirloom tomato becomes so turgid that it will split open with ripe juices … the best tomato you’ll ever taste. Isn’t it amazing how a succulent plant like the aloe vera plant stays turgid in the arid desert, while a plant native to our climate would wilt and wither in the desert?”
Read more

The English language has a lot of words for being less than serious.

Some of those words describe smart, sarcastic people (Dorothy Parker had a mordant wit), and some describe silly, foolish people (I find most of the humor in Everybody Loves Raymond to be unbearably fatuous).

Jocular, jocose, and jocund are three very similar-sounding synonyms that just mean “joking around.”

Waggish means “roguish in merriment and good humor; jocular.”

Facetious means “not meant to be taken seriously or literally.”

When I said that that burned grilled cheese you made me was the most sophisticated meal I’d ever eaten, I was being facetious. I mean, Kraft singles?

Read more

Take a sneak peek into Manhattan Prep’s 500 Essential Words and 500 Advanced Words GRE flashcard sets!

When writing these cards, we wanted to make sure that everyone could get something out of every card — even if you already know the word on the front. So, you may know whimsical, but do you know mercurial, capricious, and lark? Check it out:

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

This image — hilarious to those with formidable lexicons — has been making its way around the Internet lately:

Of course, this is only funny if you 1) recognize what crows look like, and 2) know that a murder is a group of crows.

Really? Yep! Just as you would say “a pack of dogs,” many other animals also have unique collective names:

Covey of partridges
Ostentation of peacocks
Charm of hummingbirds
Float of crocodiles

Here is a list of many more.

Most of these are rather silly, but a few contain good GRE words:

Horde of hamsters
Drove of hares
Aerie of hawks
Passel of possum
Coterie of prairie dogs
Bevy of quail
Rout of wolves

A horde is “a large group, multitude, number, etc.; a mass or crowd,” or “a tribe or troop of Asian nomads” or “any nomadic group.” Genghis Khan’s grandson Batu famouly led the Golden Horde.

A drove can be a number of oxen, sheep, or swine driven, but in the plural, droves, refers to a large crowd of people, especially in motion.

An aerie the nest of a bird of prey, as an eagle or a hawk, or “a house, fortress, or the like, located high on a hill or mountain.” Here is a previous post about the word aerie, which is also the name of a lingerie store.

A passel is “a group or lot of indeterminate number.” In other words, “a bunch,” as in, “I’ve got a bunch of towels here,” or “There’s a passel of condiments on the table.”

A coterie is “a group of people who associate closely” or “an exclusive group; clique.” Prairie dogs are probably called a coterie because they live in communal burrows.

A bevy is a large group or collection. From 500 Advanced Words, 1st Edition: Manhattan GRE Vocabulary Flash Cards:

Usage: The bar owner cringed when a bevy of women in ridiculous tiaras came in “ Another drunken bachelorette party, he sighed.

More Info: Bevy is most commonly associated with birds, and often used to describe groups of people who stick together like a flock of birds “ it usually implies a not-very-serious opinion about the group in question.

A rout is “a defeat attended with disorderly flight” or any overwhelming defeat. You can also use it as a verb, as in “to rout an army.” Why is it a rout of wolves? Well, a rout of wolves could certainly rout you.

And that brings us back to the murder of crows. Attempted murder! Nerd joke!

It seems that actress Scarlett Johansson’s phone has been hacked, and her nude photos shared with the world.

You may have wondered about the title of this blog post — a word commonly used to describe tabloid-style “news” stories is lurid , which can mean “gruesome; horrible; revolting,” or simply, “glaringly vivid or sensational.” Websites that purport to show photos of famous people’s deaths are undeniably lurid. Made-up stories about Oprah having an affair with Nick Jonas (I just made that up!) are still a bit lurid.

Another word that seems apropos is salacious, meaning “lustful, lecherous, obscene.” I wouldn’t describe ScarJo’s leaked photos as salacious so much as I would describe other people’s interest in looking at them that way. As in, “Honey, stop being so salacious — shut down that celebrity website and come to dinner!”

A few other words on the “sexy” side of the GRE are lewd (inclined to, characterized by, or inciting to lust or lechery; lascivious) and lascivious (inclined to lustfulness; wanton). Lechery is defined in the dictionary as “unrestrained and promiscuous sexuality,” but in real life is always used in a “sexual harassment” way. A lecher is the sort of person you’d hope you don’t end up alone with in a subway car. Lewd, lascivious, lecherous and lecher are all pretty bad.

(Why would these ever be on the GRE? It seems unlikely that the test makers would write a question about anything lascivious, right? If you saw one of the above words, I would suspect it to simply be a wrong answer.)

A couple of less-terrible words are bawdy and ribald, near-synonyms that mean “indecent; lewd; obscene; coarsely mocking, abusive, or irreverent.”

She loved the bawdy humor in Wedding Crashers, but she didn’t appreciate the lascivious theater attendant who asked her after the movie if she wanted to “be a bridesmaid,” whatever that meant.

Bawdy and ribald tend to refer to “dirty jokes,” and aren’t nearly as negative as the above set of words. In fact, they could absolutely appear in a GRE sentence, as in:

While today we think of opera as ______, audiences of centuries past were more attuned to — and occasionally scandalized by — the bawdy humor and ______ scenarios.

The second blank clearly calls for something that means the same as bawdy — so, ribald would be a good match. The “while” at the beginning of the sentence means that the first blank goes in an opposite direction, so the first blank should contain a word that means “not bawdy” — something like staid, proper, conservative.

So, let’s address the TMZ article above. The photos were hacked by scofflaws? What on earth are those?

As you might guess, they are people who scoff at (that is, mock, jeer, or deride) the law! What a great word.

Scofflaw – a person who flouts the law, especially one who fails to pay fines owed; a person who flouts rules, conventions, or accepted practices.

Where do scofflaws belong? See this previous post about “hoosegow”.

TheMarySue has brought The Star Trek Book of Opposites to our attention!

Here is one review of the book:

“Are you tired of all those boring, pedestrian, and antiquated board books for children that you are forced to read over and over again? Of course you are! That’s why creative authors like David Borgenicht are coming up with innovative board books that will keep you, the parent, from going insane. Behold the Star Trek Book of Opposites from Quirk Books.” ”Neatorama.com

A pedestrian can certainly be “a person who goes or travels on foot,” but as an adjective, pedestrian means “lacking in vitality, imagination, distinction, etc.; commonplace; prosaic or dull.” Related GRE words are mundane and quotidian.

Here are some images from the book:

I figured I’d try this myself with GRE-level vocabulary:

BRINKMANSHIP

Brinkmanship is “the technique or practice of maneuvering a dangerous situation to the limits of tolerance or safety in order to secure the greatest advantage, especially by creating diplomatic crises.”

VOLUPTUARY

A voluptuary is “a person whose life is devoted to the pursuit and enjoyment of luxury and sensual pleasure.”

ARGOT

An argot is a specialized idiomatic vocabulary peculiar to a particular class, profession or social group.

IMPERTURBABLE

imperturbability is the state of being “incapable of being upset or agitated; not easily excited; calm.”

In followup to the previous post about Hurricane Irene, this article from last week contained some unusual vocabulary words:

After the Outer Banks, the storm strafed Virginia with rain and strong wind. It covered the Hampton Roads region, which is thick with inlets and rivers and floods easily, and chugged north toward Chesapeake Bay. Shaped like a massive inverted comma, the storm had a thick northern flank that covered all of Delaware, almost all of Maryland and the eastern half of Virginia.

To strafe (obviously being used metaphorically here) is to “attack (ground troops, for example) with a machine gun or cannon from a low-flying aircraft.”

As a noun, a flank is a lateral part or side — as in, flank steak, or the flank of a mountain.

To flank — another military metaphor — means:

1. To protect or guard the flank of.
2. To menace or attack the flank of.
3. To be placed or situated at the flank or side of: Two stone lions flanked the entrance.
4. To put (something) on each side of: flanked the driveway with tall shrubs.

In other words, to flank is to do something along the side or sides of.

Long Beach, New York, where the surf is starting to pick up and they’re building berms to absorb the sea surge when it comes ashore overnight and Sunday.

A berm is “a narrow ledge or shelf, as along the top or bottom of a slope” or “a nearly horizontal or landward-sloping portion of a beach, formed by the deposition of sediment by storm waves.” To build a berm in preparation for a storm would mean to build up the beach so that it no longer slopes down towards the water.

In New York, authorities began the herculean job of bringing the city to a halt.

Image is “Hercules and the Centaur” by Giovanni da Bologna.

Herculean, of course, means “of unusual size, power, or difficulty” — as in, a job you wish you had Hercules to do for you.

“Hurricane Irene is tearing into town! You should be prepared ” sartorially, that is. In case your rainy day staples aren’t up to par, we found the jeans, trenches and boots to get you through this Category 3 storm in style.” -Lauren DeCarlo for TheFeast.com

Your blog editor is currently filing this post from Lower Manhattan, which is bracing itself for an inundation (a.k.a. a deluge).

One news reporter suggested we “hunker down,” an evocative expression that means:

• 1. to crouch or squat; to sit on one’s haunches
• 2. to settle in at a location for an extended period
• 3. (figuratively) to maintain a position and resist yielding to some pressure, as of public opinion
• 4. to take shelter, literally or figuratively; to assume a defensive position to resist difficulties

While checking storm coverage, this editor couldn’t help but cringe at this vocab-filled but phenomenally tactless ad:

Sartorial is a nice vocabulary word. It means “pertaining to tailors or clothing.”

Great. Moving on: 9 people have died and the storm hasn’t even hit NYC yet.

Tactless means “undiplomatic, offensively blunt, lacking tact.” Tact is “a keen sense of what to say or do to avoid giving offense; skill in dealing with difficult or delicate situations.” Don’t confuse tact, tactful, and tactless with “tactical,” which means “relating to tactics, strategic.”

Here are some other words to describe this “article”:

Opportunistic, which means taking “opportunities” at the expense of others, or “the policy or practice, as in politics, business, or one’s personal affairs, of adapting actions, decisions, etc., to expediency or effectiveness regardless of the sacrifice of ethical principles.”

Crass, which means “without refinement, delicacy, or sensitivity; gross; obtuse; stupid.”

The article itself is much worse.

“Irene is packing wind gusts up to 125 mph. Keep your fly-aways in place with this pretty headband from Anthropologie.”

“Puddles and pants don’t mix so swing by National Jean Company and try on a pair of AG’s Stilt Roll-Up Jeans. Not only are they cropped, but they’re not too tight at the hem so you can still roll them up an inch ” just in case. Parts of Puerto Rico got dumped with 10 inches of rain”don’t you want to be prepared?”

(As of right now, President Obama has signed a disaster declaration for Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene.)

According to the writer, “Rainy days means comfy days, but don’t slack off when it comes to your style.” For Hurricane Irene, you should wear an Ann Taylor sleeveless trench, a $300 silk maxi dress (dry clean only), and an Anthropologie headband, while you carry a “bubble umbrella.” You are warned that “a hat might be too much.”

Also, sleeveless trenchcoats are ridiculous. Haiku:

Oh, sleeveless trenchcoat.
Like a sock without a heel,
Dumb in bad weather.

In fact, I have a good word for useless fashion objects, especially in inappropriate environments:

Frippery:

• 1. finery in dress, especially when showy, gaudy, or the like.
• 2. empty display; ostentation.
• 3. gewgaws; trifles.

Quiz yourself: Can you define inundate, deluge, hunker down, sartorial, tactless, tact, tactical, opportunistic, crass, and frippery? Should you use potential national disasters to sell clothes? (Hint: Reread the post for definitions, and no, you really shouldn’t.)