Modcloth is an online women’s clothing store, and their product names often include puns — for instance, “By Land or By Seersucker,” or “Un-twill We Meet Again.”

Sometimes, it’s kind of hard to get the joke without a formidable lexicon:

I Ingenue It!

An ingenue is a “naive, innocent girl or young woman,” or the role of such a woman in a play or movie, or an actress who plays such roles. So while it might sound bad to be “naive,” the word “ingenue” is often used positively to refer to the new “it girl” in the movies.

Ingenue is related to two other words that are much more likely to appear on the GRE — ingenuous and its antonym, disingenuous.

Ingenuous means “lacking in cunning, guile, or worldliness; artless,” or “openly straightforward or frank; candid.” (You can just memorize that inGENUous means GENUine — that’s a pretty good trick, right?) That is, ingenuousness is good when you want someone to be honest with you, but it’s a terrible quality for your lawyer to have — you need him or her to be crafty and cunning.

Disingenuous means “not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating” — in other words, not genuine.

Set a President Dress

This play on words references the expression “set a precedent.”

Precedent shares a root with precede, “to come before.”

A precedent is “an act or instance that may be used as an example in dealing with subsequent similar instances.” For instance:

Eleanor Roosevelt set a precedent for First Ladies’ publicly leading substantial projects rather than merely hosting dinner parties and quietly supporting uncontroversial charities.

Lily-putian Loveliness Dress

Ha! This, of course, is a play on lilliputian, meaning “very small.”

Read more about lilliputian in this post: Vocab at the Movies: Gulliver’s Travels.

You can follow the Dalai Lama on Twitter here, although we doubt he writes the posts himself. Let’s see some of his pithy remarks.

Altruism is “unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.”

Mundane means “of the world, secular” or “ordinary, concerned with commonplaces.” A synonym is quotidian.

Equanimity means “the quality of being calm and even-tempered; composure.” It comes from the Latin “aequus” for “even” and “animus” for “mind.”

Did you know that animus (the same root in animation) is actually a word in its own right? Animus means “an attitude that informs one’s actions,” or “a feeling of animosity; ill will,” as in, “He couldn’t get over his animus enough to work for his old childhood nemesis.”

Forbearance means “Tolerance and restraint in the face of provocation; patience.” And if you’ve gotten in trouble with your student loans, you know it also means “The act of a creditor who refrains from enforcing a debt when it falls due.”

Impartial means “fair, unbiased, not prejudiced.”

This Tweet didn’t use any GRE-style vocabulary words, but it did remind me of one: syncretism, the “reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous.”

Feeling enlightened yet?

A scion is a descendant or heir, generally of a rich person. And while there’s nothing in the dictionary definition about being male, culturally speaking, the word scion is almost always used to describe the son of a powerful man.

I have used scion in class as an example of denotation vs. connotation (the dictionary definition of a word versus the “feeling” or cultural baggage of the word), and was thinking: I’ve never heard anyone describe a woman as a scion, but there’s no reason you couldn’t. For instance, Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald Trump.

While Paris Hilton is an “heiress” (no one thinks she’s going to end up running the Hilton hotel brand someday), Ivanka is a mogul in her own right.

A mogul is “an important or powerful person” or “a rich or powerful person.” The word derives from Moghul or Mughal, a member of the Muslim dynasty founded by Baber (or a soldier supporting that dynasty) that ruled India until 1857.

Another word that comes to us from Hindi is nabob, “a person of wealth and prominence.” This originally was a European who made his fortune in India or elsewhere in the East. (Indian restaurants called Nawab or other variant spellings are referencing this colonial legacy.)

A variety of celebrity-type articles have referred to Ivanka’s newborn baby as a “mini-mogul.” Interestingly, when I Googled to find an example, all the articles that used the phrase “mini-mogul” were from before Ivanka actually gave birth. No one has yet used the phrase to refer to the baby after it was born. Maybe because it’s a girl? Interesting.

Final post from Damn You, Auto Correct!:

The person who sent this in remarks that she meant “Hilarious.”

From the comments:

Hoosegow isn’t a new word. It’s a slang term for jail.

The really hoosegow thing here is that the AutoCorrect is apparently being trained by 19th-century cowboys.

You’d be surprised. Everytime I try to type in my friend Greg’s name it wants to auto-complete to Gregarious.

My last name is Hasegawawhich autocorrects to Hoosegow.

Hoosegow does indeed mean “jail,” and it comes from the Mexican Spanish jusgado for “prison,” which ultimately comes from the Latin judicāre, from judex, “a judge.”

I may be advertising the fact that I am a decade older than my students, but I already knew hoosegow from the Red Hot Chili Peppers “Give It Away” (on Youtube here):

I’m a low brow but I rock a little know how
No time for the piggies or the hoosegow
Get smart get down with the pow wow
Never been a better time than right now.

Supposedly, the working title of the Chili Peppers’ new album is “Dr Johnny Skinz’s Disproportionately Rambunctious Polar Express Machine-head.” Take that, GRE!

This post from Damn You, Auto Correct! inappropriately inserts the word buttressed:

As a noun, a buttress is a structure, usually brick or stone, built against a wall for support or reinforcement; something resembling a buttress, such as the flared base of certain tree trunks, a horny growth on the heel of a horse’s hoof, or a projection from a mountainside; or just anything that serves to support, prop, or reinforce.

As a verb, to buttress means “to support or reinforce with a buttress; to sustain, prop, or bolster.”

The related word bolster means, literally, a long narrow pillow or cushion, but you can also use the word as a verb to mean “to support or prop up with or as if with a long narrow pillow or cushion; to buoy up or hearten.”

So, let’s get this straight — a buttress is a support for a building and a bolster is more of a support for your back when you sit down. But you can use both words to mean “to support.” An army can buttress its defenses, and someone can bolster your spirits with a care package.

Here is a previous post on the Vocabulary Blog about buttress.

In this post on Damn You, Auto Correct!, someone is unintentionally referring to tiles used in mosaics:

According to Wikipedia, a tessera (plural: tesserae) is “an individual tile in a mosaic, usually formed in the shape of a cube.”

Tesserae is also the term for dice used in ancient Rome (makes sense — they’re cubes!) or for the layers of calcification on sharks’ otherwise cartilaginous jaws and backbones (um, interesting).

And now, this post:

A garderobe is a chamber for storing clothes, a wardrobe; or the clothes stored in such a chamber; or simply any private chamber.

The word is Middle English from Old French and really does come from the roots for “guarding” your “robes.” (So does the word “wardrobe,” actually.)

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.