SAT words that adults ought to know

In My Humble Opinion
1

I just told my coworker that an email he sent me was “an interesting juxtaposition of topics”. I realized that most adults know what “juxtaposition” means and it’s likely to come up in conversation. “Defenestrate”, however, is a rare word that I’ve never actually used in a natural way, and I wouldn’t expect an average intelligent adult to know what it means. “Counterfeit”, though, is way too common. Your average 9th grader would know what that means, if not younger kids.

So I’m looking for some good words that

  1. Lots of people actually use in casual conversation,
  2. Adults know what they mean, but
  3. Most teens and younger do not.

In other words, you’d say “Wow, that’s a big word for a high schooler” but not to an adult. Try to come up with them off the top of your head. Anybody can pull up a list of SAT words out of Google…what’s the fun in that?

2

Are you asking people to provide examples without using Google or wiki? Mavericky.

3

Exacerbate.

Personally, I think people should be able to get the definition of a lot of SAT words from context as they hear them in conversation (for example, “The famine, initially caused by locusts eating the crops, was exacerbated by a 10-year drought.”), but lots of people don’t listen to conversations well enough or read very carefully - they’re thinking of what their response will be instead or skimming.

4

Clearly you’ve never been to Prague - those people loved their defenestrating.

5

I’ve never done an SAT - you’re just looking for big words?

6

Not-so obscure words that are impressive for 9th graders, but not adults.

7

True. But I want a list of words that people actually say in day-to-day speech. Exacerbate is a good example. I use that word, and I hear people say it all the time. If we just look for lists on the intarwebs, it doesn’t actually prove that people use those words. We all might know them or be able to derive the definition from context, but they’re not really in use and so don’t belong on our list.

8

Defenestrate is actually my default “strange word” for when the topic comes up.

How about anachronism?

9

The thing about “defenestrate” is that you don’t find much call for it in the average conversation.

A couple that you can use day to day:
antediluvian
sesquipedalian

10

Subterfuge
Collateral
Mitigate
Paradigm
Extraneous
Forensic

I’m amazed at the (younger) people in my office that do not know these words.

11

Sorry, I should have clarified for our non-US Dopers. The Scholastica Aptitude Test, whose scores are used by colleges to judge admission, has a language/vocabulary section. Students often memorize lists of big words that could show up on the test. 90% or more of these words are useless in real life. Half of them are promptly forgotten, while the other half is retained but never used. I’m looking for that 10%- words that are learned after high school that are actually commonly used.

For example, in this list, there’s words that people already know by the time they’re studying for the SAT - abhor, adversity, discredit, etc. And there are words that people know, but no one ever really says in everyday conversations, like abdicate, impetuous, ostentatious. Then there are difficult words that people will likely forget, like sagacity or perfidious.

You learn them late in life (so they’re SAT words) but adults remember and use them (so they ought to know them).

12

Maybe you don’t, but we in the waste management business find it very useful.

13

My 8th & 9th grade English teacher had us to vocabulary exercises that she called the ‘Monday Night Special’.

She would assign (10) words (the majority of which would be “SAT words”). We had to write each one ten times, give the part of speech, derivation, original spelling, original definition, current definition, and write a sentence using the word. Assigned Mondays, due Tuesdays. She would quiz us every Friday and we had to know spelling, part of speech, derivation, and current definition.

Extra credit would be turning in index cards with examples of finding the word out and about (on a TV show, in a book, magazine, newspaper).

Some of the words that I know I learned from those two years:

Gesticulate
Stoic
Sesquipedalian (which I think she threw in for irony rather than SAT usage)
Onomatopoeia
Visage

There are more, but those are the only ones coming to mind at the moment.

14

perjorative. I am amazed at the people who don’t know it.

15

Ah, this is my default “strange word.” It’s even better if the person I’m talking to asks me to define it.

16

Callipygian. :slight_smile:

17

I’ve been an SAT instructor for 14 years. On a daily basis, I am still astounded at the words high school juniors don’t know. I had a kid last year that swore he had no idea what the word ‘muffler’ meant. They often think that ‘organic’ means “pure”, and that ‘random’ means “weird”. I can’t tell you the last time I taught a class where more than one person knew any of these: dubious, egregious, gregarious, deleterious, pithy, apathetic.
In any given class, at least 3/4 of the kids wont’ have a clue what ‘augment’ means, either.

18

An especially good one because it’s hard to spell – pejorative has but one “r”.

Trying to think of some words I remember learning as an adult …

garish
sybaritic
redoubtable
perseveration/perseverative (not “preservation/preservative” :smiley: )
avatar (of course, with a popular cartoon & movie, this might not be so tough these days).
ethereal
endemic
atavistic

19

Penultimate.

20

Well, this is not a “big” word, but it is one that is often misused: Surreal.

It came to mind because I have a current professor in a Script Analysis class, who politely challenged my use of it recently when I described a script we were using as, among other things, “surreal”.

Seems it is a pet peeve of hers, the way it gets tossed around, as in “Dude, that was so SURREAL!” :stuck_out_tongue:

I told her I was fairly sure I was using it appropriately, as I meant to indicate what it MEANT, she suggested I look it up, and next class, armed with official definitions, I proved my case. ( I suspect she was using me/my mention as a “teaching moment” for the class, since she readily conceded the point and is still giving me A’s)

As a Film Major, yes, I KNOW the origin of the word and what “surrealism” is in art/film, philosophy. And I’m 44 and fairly well read.

I ALSO know it means, “having a dreamlike or otherworldly quality”, and the play we were discussing DID, imo. (Eurydice, by Sarah Ruhl). Deals with the Underworld and death, has talking stones, impossible situations, and a raining elevator and even the author states the setting should be more like “Alice in Wonderland” than the Underworld as conventionally considered. :rolleyes:

But I have to agree with her that there are many words that younger (esp) people THINK they know but really don’t. Perhaps that is a whole 'nother topic, though.

I find that even in college, a great many younger students are woefully illiterate.
And I won’t even go INTO some of the people on Judge Judy :smiley:

Reminds me of the old SNL skit of the guy in prison who used all these big words, completely erroneously (oh, there’s one I guess half my classmates at any given time would not know off the top of their heads) :stuck_out_tongue:

But I am proud to say that MY 18 yr. old son probably knows more such words than I do…he’s odd that way. Has a thing for reading and obscure words and kicks much ass at Balderdash. :cool:

“I do not think that word means what you think it means.” The Princess Bride