AWKWORD MOMENTS: A LIVELY GUIDE TO THE 100 TERMS SMART PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW By Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras

Back in 1967 when I was preparing to take the SAT exam, I found the word “jejune” in the list of possible words I might encounter when I took the test. Jejune was not a word I was familiar with. I hadn’t seen it in the books I read or the people I talked to. Jejune means dull, uninteresting, and juvenile. And, surprise surprise, jejune showed up on the SAT exam when I took it!

I took three years of Latin so I’m pretty good at Latin expressions. But the French and the German words and phrases baffle me.

Ross and Kathryn Petras think smart people should know these 100 words. How many of them do you know? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  • ACKNOWLEGEMENTS — vii
  • INTRODUCTION — 1
  • ad hominem — 5
  • anethema — 6
  • antediluvian — 8
  • appurtenance — 11
  • ascetic — 12
  • atavistic — 14
  • bespoke — 15
  • bate noire –17
  • betimes — 18
  • bildrunsroman — 20
  • cacophony — 21
  • capricious — 23
  • casuistry — 25
  • catch-22 — 26
  • churlish — 28
  • crepuscular — 29
  • de facto / de jure — 31
  • denouement — 33
  • didactic — 34
  • disingenuous — 36
  • doppelgänger — 37
  • egregious — 39
  • empirical — 40
  • ennui — 42
  • epistemology — 43
  • ersatz — 45
  • evanescent — 46
  • exegesis — 48
  • existential — 49
  • extenuating — 51
  • fascist / fascism — 53
  • feckless — 54
  • fungible — 56
  • gnostic — 57
  • hagiography — 59
  • hermeneutic — 61
  • heuristic — 62
  • hubris — 64
  • iconoclast — 66
  • implicit — 67
  • inchoate — 69
  • insouciant — 70
  • internecine — 72
  • inveterate — 73
  • je ne sais quoi — 75
  • jejune — 76
  • laconic — 78
  • legerdemain — 79
  • limpid — 81
  • louche — 82
  • mea culpa — 84
  • metaphor / simile — 85
  • mot juste — 87
  • neologism — 88
  • nihilism — 90
  • ontology — 91
  • opprobrium — 93
  • panegyric — 94
  • pedant — 96
  • perfunctory — 97
  • peripatetic — 99
  • polemic — 100
  • postmodern — 102
  • prima facie — 104
  • protean — 105
  • putative — 107
  • QED — 108
  • quantum — 110
  • quid pro quo — 112
  • quintessential — 113
  • quixotic — 115
  • quotidian — 117
  • realpolitik –118
  • recondite — 120
  • risible — 121
  • sangfroid — 123
  • sanguine — 124
  • saturnine — 126
  • Schroedinger’s cat — 127
  • sclerotic — 129
  • semiotics — 131
  • sententious — 133
  • shibboleth — 134
  • sine qua non — 136
  • solecism / solipsism — 137
  • storm und drang — 139
  • sub rosa — 140
  • sui generis — 142
  • sumptuary — 143
  • sword of Damocles — 145
  • sycophant — 146
  • syllogism — 148
  • syntax — 150
  • teleological — 151
  • trope — 153
  • ubiquitous — 155
  • wabi sabi — 156
  • weltschmerz — 158
  • zeitgeist — 159
  • NOTES — 161
  • ABOUT THE AUTHORS — 183

32 thoughts on “AWKWORD MOMENTS: A LIVELY GUIDE TO THE 100 TERMS SMART PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW By Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras

  1. wolfi7777

    I know maybe 60% with some others I’m not so sure.
    My advantage there is that I grew up in the French occupied zone of southern Germany so my first foreign language was French.
    Since I was one of the better pupils I also was “forced” to take Latin as my second language instead of English which the large majority chose.
    One advantage: in Latin we were max 10 while the rest of the class who learned English were about 25.
    They also tried to get us to learn classical Greek – but after learning the alphabet we stopped – of course I used all those alpahas and omegas later studying math.
    English became our third forreign language later but with only two lessons a week we didn’t learn much, not even the basics of grammar.
    But since I became a big Rock&Roll fan as a teenager and also could receive AFN (American Forces Network) I soon became better at English than most of my friends.
    PS:
    With some of the words I’m not sure.
    bildrunsroman, from which language is that?
    I only know the German Bildungsroman which is a novel that describes the growing up of a person.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Wolf, your guess is correct. Bildungsroman is German for a tale of the a young person reaching adulthood. Your language credentials are impressive!

      Reply
  2. Deb

    This looks like an interesting book. I know quite a few of the words listed—thanks in great part to my childhood habit of reading with a dictionary close by. I had an OCD thing where, whenever I encountered an unfamiliar word or phrase, I couldn’t allow myself to read on until I looked up the definition. One of my favorites (not listed) is “soi disant” which means “so called” but with a sense of “and I don’t believe it”, as in “Rand Paul is an eye doctor, soi disant.”

    /By the way, George, I believe the term is “bete noir” (pet peeve) not “bate noir” as listed—unless that’s another term I need to know, lol.

    Reply
      1. Deb

        Eye doctor—who created his own certification board when he couldn’t pass the one in his home state (Kentucky). Anyone who would let that quack within ten feet of their eyeballs with any type of surgical implement deserves what they get.

      2. Todd Mason

        I now remember that bit of business, too…well, he managed to follow his obstetrician (!–not an Ob I’d ever go to, either, if I was to need one) father into politics. Where he gets to wreak havoc in a less hands-on manor. (Yeah, I’d looked him up to see he got his degree, to some insufficient degree, clearly, in ophthalmology.)

      3. Todd Mason

        However, as someone who lives with an MD, “Certification Boards” are often more a scam than anything else these years. Anyone who struts around shouting they’re board-certified is perhaps not someone you need to see.

      4. george Post author

        Todd, like you I’m a skeptic about certifications. Every few years our College had to go through a long, tedious, and expensive “Recertification” process. I regarded it as a shake-down by the Recertification organization to send a team of “experts” to tour our campus and watch our PowerPoint presentations…and then bill us for their stamp of approval. The Students couldn’t care less about Accreditation. They were more concerned with the cost of tuition.

      5. Todd Mason

        That is precisely the scam the most famous/oldest extant medical “board certification” org engages in, only it’s basically the MDs (et al.) pay the fee and barely do even that much paperwork beyond.

    1. Jeff+Meyerson

      Love the Rand Paul tie-in to the definition of soi disant!

      My late mother in law would probably have gone to him. She once went to a “podiatrist” (so called) because she was friends with his parents. This was before he lost his license as an incompetent quack (he “voluntarily” gave it up), though by then he had damaged her feet.

      Reply
    1. Todd Mason

      What I thought–but vaguely. As one source notes: “Wabi-Sabi refers to an aesthetic philosophy and vision applied to objects, which alludes to beauty in imperfections and the value of the passage of time, and openly accepts the deterioration and transience of existence, both human and material.”

      Reply
  3. Patto Abbott

    Fewer that I would wish. And I probably don’t really know the exact definition of some that I use. Rather than doing what Deb did and looking unknown words up, I assumed I would get the meaning from the sentence around it and that is not always the case

    Reply
  4. Jeff+Meyerson

    How many do I know? All but one – wabi sabi.

    How many could I easily define? Hm, not all, but I could give you a general feel for what most of them mean.

    I was going to correct Bildungsroman too. Think Thomas Mann.

    Reply
  5. Beth+Fedyn

    I too took Latin so got a head-start on many of these.
    This year I bought a New Word a Day calendar but was complaining that many of the words weren’t that new. K. pointed out my vocabulary might be a little better than the usual audience for this.
    And I still look up words that I don’t know. What a concept!

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Beth, same here. I have a LARGE PRINT dictionary. Diane looks words up on her iPhone, but I don’t like to squint at that tiny print.

      Reply
  6. Kent Morgan

    Despite taking Latin for five years, I am not even going to look at the list. I remember exactly nothing from those years. I stiil blame a couple of my friends for convincing me to take Latin rather than French when we had to make a choice after taking both in grade 8 in our school in northern Manitoba. My one friend ended up studying medicine so Latin was the correct choice for him. The other became a geography professor at a Canadian uinversity so he should have stuck with French.

    Reply

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