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
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
George did note the German terms were those among the least familiar. I blame my own sloppiness here, only partly justly, on an aging keyboard…
Wolf, your guess is correct. Bildungsroman is German for a tale of the a young person reaching adulthood. Your language credentials are impressive!
I know most of them, but being a very smart person I inveterately pretend not to.
Jerry, you are a very smart person! I only knew 83 of the 100 words. French and German terms always baffle me!
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.
I was afflicted by the common misunderstanding that Paul was a dentist I didn’t want…thanks for the pointer!
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.
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.)
Todd, I see your point.
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.
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.
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.
Todd, no profession escapes scams, not even the medical profession!
Deb, WORDPRESS demons are at it again! Thanks for the heads up! This program loves to change words without telling me.
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.
Being a pedant (and former wunderkind a standardized testing), I know hem all, though will seek to refresh my fading grasp of “wabi sabi”…
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.”
Todd, I’ve never used Wabi-Sabi…ever!
Irony not lost on me.
Todd, you and Jerry go to the front of the class in vocabulary skill!
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
Patti, I use context clues too in figuring out the meaning of words. But, French and German words and phases confound me.
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.
The Boy is the Father to the Mann, after all.
Jeff, wabi sabi shows up in articles more and more lately. I’ve read Thomas Mann but his works leave me cold.
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!
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.
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.
Kent, I took Latin and then a couple of years of Spanish…which I dimly remember. I’m just not a linguist.
I know them all but I don’t use most of them because I don’t to look like a showoff.
Bob, glad to have you back! I remember you showing off your dance moves at the BOUCHERCON in Milwaukee!