A young chum of mine is preparing to take the Graduate Record Examination in order to get herself into graduate school. She wrote to complain that she is having to learn long lists of vocabulary which she somehow missed in many years of undergraduate education. She gave me some examples:

alacrity - eager and enthusiastic willingness

disabuse - to undeceive; to set right

ennui - dissatisfaction and restlessness resulting from boredom or apathy

obviate - to anticipate and make unnecessary

paean - a song or hymn of praise and thanksgiving ( orginially to Apollo)

perspicacious - acutely perceptive (I think it's easier to say the definition than the word)

chary - wary; cautious, sparing

impecunious - lacking funds; without money (I think this is a term only used by those w/ $$)

inveigle - to obtain by deception or flattery

evanescent - tending to disappear like vapor; vanishing

grandiloquence - pompous speech or expression (I think the word itself is pompous)

mendacity - the condition of being untruthful; dishonesty (You see mendacious folks in court!)

obdurate - unyielding; hardhearted; intractable

opprobrium - disgrace; contempt; scorn

salubrious - promoting health or well-being (to remember this one, I created a visual image of someone slathered in goop at a health spa)

specious - seeming true, but actually being fallacious; plausible but false

When I wrote back and asked where she got the list, she told me that there are several such lists available on-line. Here is one of them: The List

Being a pastoral sort, I did not write back and say that, had she only been a recipient of AWAD and a member of this board, she would have less studying to do.

What the HELL kind of an education do she get that she didn't learn these? I knew all these in high school fer Chrissake!

I'm with TEd though I wouldn't have stated it quite so bluntly. I'm pretty sure I knew all these words before starting (undergrad) college. I went to a public high school, in Atlanta -- i.e. nothing faincy. Condolences to your young friend, Fr Steve. Poor girl.

I didn't learn these in HS... maybe a few of them, but certainly not the whole list. they're all good words, but most are way over the top for normal usage, imnsho.

Depends if we're talking about FS' sample or the entire list he directed us to. Sure, I expect many of us knew lots of these, since we're a way above-average sample of literacy.

But personally I did not know this one at *all in high-school years:

detumescence--diminishing or lessening of swelling

Good luck to her in at least continuing to build her vocab as she needs it.

I knew all these in HS, but I did poorly on the SAT, scoring a scant 580 on the verbal portion. However, much later, I considered going on for my doctorate and thought it would be good to take a practice GRE. At that time, I got a 790 on the verbal. I'm not sure if I was aware of AWAD at the time. I think studying vocabulary for it's own sake is a worthwhile thing or else I wouldn't be here - but I suspect most people will the same problem I have which is that I don't remember words unless I use them or I see them used over and over.

The big difference between me at 18 and me at 30-something was not studying lists of words (which I'm not knocking, btw), but the fact that I'd expanded my reading. I used to only read comic books, science books, and sf. It turns out that a crap load of those GRE words are words that you see time and again in classic and modern literature.

I think I might have done even worse on my SAT had I not had two years of Latin and a pretty good HS etymology course behind me.

Anyway, I think the very best way to prepare for the GRE is to take a sample (real)test first. Other than that, the best way to practice for the verbal portion is to have a program reading widely - well before you take the actual test.

If, otoh, someone is reduced to memorizing lists of words, a few hints:

1. Have practical goals.
Don't say "I'm going to do 100 new words a day" or even 20 because you wont keep to that schedule.

2. Take practice tests - one a week, if you can manage it.
There are books that contain actual tests from which, if you are scrupulous, you can derive a very good sense of what the real test will entail.

3. Find authoritative lists of these words and try to prioritize the list.

4. Use the words that you are learning.
Understand them and make a habit of using them in your conversations. It will seem pretentious to the people around you, but you have to get into that habit, if you want to expand your vocabulary.

5. Don't just memorize a word and never look at it again.
Each time you practice, make it a cumulative practice.

6. Make flash cards. (Using the available wordlists, it would be an extremely trivial program to write a text based program that would take a dictionary and then test you - assuming the dictionary were in a format that was readily consumable.)

FF sez: "It turns out that a crap load of those GRE words are words that you see time and again in classic and modern literature."

Is a "crap load" a volumetric measurement or one determined by weight?

About measures

> Whether sifted or not, a pound of flour is always a pound of flour.

yeahbut it cooks differently if sifted and fluffed with air, at least in some cases...

[/cookery interjection] WNRYTYRP

Yeahbut, a pound of flour spread evenly through the air in a room can be darned near as dangerous as a pound of gasoline.

Quote:

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Yeahbut, a pound of flour spread evenly through the air in a room can be darned near as dangerous as a pound of gasoline.

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For a while, I lurked on a poetics list, and only came forward once, when this was mentioned. At issue was a art installation in which sacks of flour moved through several rooms on conveyor belts. The installation was closed down by the local fire chief, and the poeticists couldn't fathom why. Organic powders are explove when become airborne at certain concentrations. A Queens, NY bubble gum factor once exploded, killing many workers, when the powdered gum base ignited.