Maybe it's just me, but I never really had a problem with the vocabulary section of the SAT in high school. Granted, this might be because of my superior intellect, but I’ve got another theory. When you make a habit of reading interesting novels with pretty interesting words as a kid, you start adapting a pretty interesting way of speaking simply through osmosis. Interesting, no?
Case in point—I credit Lemony Snicket’s superb (though completely and cruelly cliff-hanging)
A Series of Unfortunate Events with 90% of my success at fooling my college professors into thinking I’m articulate. Simply put, the man’s proclivity for unnecessarily complicated terms has probably done more for the state of American literacy than all the PSSAs combined.
And so, we’re presenting you with nine superb vocabulary words that pretty much ensure you’ll never look twice at that section of the SAT again, courtesy of a man who has literally tricked us into reading the dictionary—and enjoying it—for the better part of ten years.
