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.