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.

Insidious is an adjective meaning:

1. Working or spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner: insidious rumors; an insidious disease.
2. Intended to entrap; treacherous: insidious misinformation.
3. Beguiling but harmful; alluring: insidious pleasures.

Insidious is also the title of a 2010 horror film starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne and Ty Simpkins. According to IMDB: “A family looks to prevent evil spirits from trapping their comatose child in a realm called The Further.” Seems likely that a haunted house could provide a steathily-spreading evil.

Relatedly, an insidious disease is “a disease existing, without marked symptoms, but ready to become active upon some slight occasion; a disease not appearing to be as bad as it really is.”

Insidious Disease is also, appropriately enough, a death metal band:

If you ask INSIDIOUS DISEASE about their definition of death metal they would probably answer that it should satisfy your urge for darkness, the morbid and the sick, the perverted and the twisted, all things insane that can be discovered within the human mind and soul manifesting in a sound that makes you vomit your guts out!

Don’t confuse insidious with the similar-sounding invidious, which means:

1. Tending to rouse ill will, animosity, or resentment: invidious accusations.
2. Containing or implying a slight; discriminatory
3. Envious.

Use insidious for creeping, slow-moving evil, and invidious for actions done by humans that are immediately obvious as being harmful. Racist speech is invidious, and the lingering effects of racism have insidious effects on people’s lives.

Recently, a student saw the word swagger in a GRE problem and began to laugh.

“Why is that funny?” I asked.

“I didn’t know that was a real vocab word,” she said. “I thought it was only for rap videos.”

Fantastically, swagger is actually a perfectly GRE appropriate word, and has been around much longer than hip-hop has even existed.

Swagger means “To walk or conduct oneself with an insolent or arrogant air; strut.”

Some other types of walking that might occur on the GRE include:

Sashay: To walk or proceed, especially in an easy or casual manner; To strut or flounce in a showy manner.

Amble: To walk slowly or leisurely; stroll.

Lumber: To walk or move with heavy clumsiness; To move with a rumbling noise.

Perambulate: To walk through; To inspect (an area) on foot; To walk about; roam or stroll.

Circumambulate: To walk around (something), especially as part of a ritual.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cDLZqe735k

Thanks to Bobby Brown, “prerogative” is one of the most mispronounced words in English — as you can hear in the video, Mr. Brown pronounces the word “PER-ogative.” (Click the audio icon on this page for a correct pronunciation).

Britney Spears repeats the error:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIOH8Trfas4

A prerogative is an exclusive right or privilege held by a person or group, or the exclusive right and power to command, decide, rule, or judge.

According to Thesaurus.com:, “a privilege is a right that may be extended to a group or a number of people; a prerogative is a right that, customarily, is vested in a single person.”

It is the boss’s prerogative to determine the office supply budget.

While it is the prerogative of pop stars to pronounce words however they like in their videos, it is the prerogative of lexicographers to record the correct pronunciations of words in dictionaries.

The words warrant and license can be used in somewhat similar ways, although they are milder than prerogative.

The anti-death penalty activist argued that violence is not a warrant for future violence.

The pronunciation activist argued that fame does not give one license to butcher the English language, even if slightly improving the nation’s collective vocabulary in the process.

“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.

Here’s something a prodigious lexicon is good for — naming nail polish colors when you’ve got 55 shades of “pink.”

If you are wont to frequent nail salons, you may have noticed that many of the color names involve puns (and often are not terribly descriptive of the color they purport to represent): Tart Deco, Lapis of Luxury, Pinking Up the Pieces, and my favorite … Sand of a Beach.

A few color names, however — currently in the Essie line — sport more erudite names containing GRE vocabulary words:

Demure Vixen

Demure means “characterized by shyness and modesty; reserved.” Culturally, demure is almost always used to describe women. A word that also means “reserved” and is often used to describe men is staid.

Interestingly, demure can also mean “affectedly or coyly decorous, sober, or sedate” — that is, faking being shy and reserved as a flirtation strategy. That makes more sense when paired with vixen, a female fox or what the dictionary describes as “an ill-tempered or quarrelsome woman,” a usage that has since fallen out of fashion. Vixen is often used in a fashion and pop culture context to describe a femme fatale or audaciously appealing woman. (This word is a bit too sexy for the GRE, though).

Vermillionaire

What a keen pun! Vermillion is a bright red to reddish-orange color.

Going Incognito

Incognito means undercover: “having one’s identity concealed, as under an assumed name, especially to avoid notice or formal attentions.”

Incognito shares the root cog (to know) with many words relating to knowledge, such as cogent, cognition, cognitive, cognizant, and reconnaissance.

“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.

From the UK’s Daily Mail:

Scotch isn’t just a drink! It’s also a verb!

Scotch means “to put a definite end to; crush; stamp out; foil,” as in to scotch a rumor; to scotch a plan.

Scotch can also mean “to injure so as to make harmless” or “to cut, gash, or score.”

Of course, the score being used in that definition is the one that means “to make (cuts, lines, etc) in or on” or “to record by making notches in” — for instance, you might score a door frame with a penknife as a cute way of recording a child’s height as he or she grows.

Some words similar in meaning to scotch:

• Quash
• Quell
• Squelch
• Stymie
• Thwart

I was going to wrap your entire house in toilet paper, but the rainstorm scotched my plans.