Do You Have an Ivy League Vocabulary?

Being called inept is never a good thing. It generally means that you do not have the skills to do the thing you are in fact doing. If you are inept, you need to be retrained or just get a different job. In this case, though, the person calling the students inept is the one who should be teaching them the skills. So, doesn't that mean he is inept?

Your friend was communicating to you that her behavior was out of the ordinary. But you may want to keep an eye on her and try to establish for yourself what her ordinary behavior looks like before you take it as an aberration.

If a toddler acquiesces to a parent's demands, you can be pretty sure that there is a treat involved. Toddlers don't easily relent in their desires without some external motivation. Acquiescence denotes a tacit approval, rather than the full approval of consent.

While a teacher may indeed be lacking a pedicure, the word pedagogy refers to the method or philosophy of teaching the teacher employs. In general, it's rare for students to complain about a teacher's pedagogy or lack thereof, but that may well be different in Ivy League schools.

It sounds like the doctor is merely inviting you to read over the current research carefully. While peruse sometimes is used to mean casual reading, it actually refers to scrutinizing a text thoroughly.

When someone says there is a nominal fee, the literal meaning is that it will be inconsequential, or in name only. But it’s always a good idea to check the fine print ... How consequential a fee is can be entirely relative.

The word predilection comes from the Latin roots "prae" — in advance — and "diligere" — to select — so the word means "to select in advance." Thus, if you're going to a place that offers fish tacos, you can just know in advance that's what she's going to select. That probably doesn't mean you should just order them for her, though.

The salient points of an article would be the most important, most noticeable and memorable points. So, if a professor were to tell you that your point was not salient, they would likely be trying to gently tell you that your comment was off topic.

Buttress, in this sense, means a line of defense or support. The word comes from a specific architectural meaning, though. A buttress is a wall built to hold up the structure of another building.

The quintessential example is the perfect example of whatever the quality is. Like, the quintessential granola-type eats granola for breakfast with a kale smoothie and wears patchouli instead of deodorant. The word comes from the Latin for the fifth essence, which, in Medieval thinking, was the stuff the heavens were made of.

If your boyfriend wants to have a furtive relationship, then chances are he has something else furtive going on behind your back. Why else would he not want anyone to know? Furtive means secretive, but it also implies hiding intentions as well.

An equine adventure would involve horses, presumably a horseback ride — unless you're in Kentucky, where you may need to get a funny hat and dress up for the Derby. Either one has the potential for a good date, but it depends on your preferences.

The word incisive may sound negative, but it means sharp and to the point. If a supervisor pulls you aside to discuss your incisive comment, she's most likely showing you that your words cut to the heart of the conversation.

Though it may sound like just another way to say someone's a prude, the word prudent means being wise and considering the consequences of actions.

Telling a toddler that they should not exacerbate the situation expects them to understand that continuing in their behavior will make a bad situation worse. This is a pretty big ask for a toddler. But their exacerbating behavior can be very exasperating sometimes, which makes it understandable why someone may use words way beyond the cognitive abilities of their audience.

Adulterated does not actually mean adult rated, and it certainly doesn't mean animated. Adulterating something means adding something that takes away from the purity of the original or otherwise ruining it. It's more common to see something labeled "unadulterated" than "adulterated," since you don't want a product label to say "ruined."

Out of the possibilities, circumspection seems the most useful lesson for walking at night. To be circumspect is to look around, to be cautious and to consider all the possible options. The act of caution and actual looking around go hand in hand when walking at night.

Cumulative exams require students to go back to the dawn of time (or the beginning of the semester or term) and try to remember what they learned. The word cumulative contains the meaning not just of adding one thing to another, but of knowledge accumulating, like a snowball growing larger as it rolls downhill.

A binary is something that can be seen as black and white or either/or. It’s a choice with two options, and the options are opposed to one another. Gender, many argue, should be seen as non-binary, meaning there is a range of possibilities beyond the binary of male and female.

The world indolent, meaning lazy or slothful, comes from the Latin "in" (or "not") and "dolere" (or "give pain"). So, the original word signified something that did not give pain. Around the 17th century, the word took on the meaning of laziness. It seems that those 17th-century folk took seriously the idea of no pain no gain, or the earlier version, no pain or you're a lazy bum.

The preamble to a speech is just a warm-up for the real thing. If you're already getting sleepy, you may need to excuse yourself. The preamble to the Constitution of the United States, beginning "We the people," is one of the more famous preambles.

A vociferous student talks loudly and calls a lot of attention to themselves, while a raucous student would be more rowdy and disruptive. Vociferous is not necessarily a negative term, so it could be used euphemistically to describe the loud student.

If you're accused of being arcane, you may be spending too much time with mystical and esoteric texts. The word arcane comes from the Latin for "chest." So something arcane is shut up in a chest, making it inaccessible to most people.

Two things are analogous when they can be compared. Usually, seeing an analogy between two things illuminates something about the items being compared. Certainly, raising children and raising pets have their similarities, but some may argue that the differences are so far-reaching as to make them weak analogies for each other.

To matriculate means to become enrolled as a student. The word arises from the Latin "matrix," which, before it was a Keanu Reeves movie, meant "breeding female." If you can understand how that's analogous for your life, you're definitely Ivy League material. Congratulations!

Infamous is one of those words that's confusing because it sounds like a word with a different meaning. Being infamous doesn't mean you’re not famous or that you're really famous. Rather, it means that you're famous for your bad reputation, and that's not really the fame most people are looking for.

Contrary to the way it’s often used in a sentence, a diatribe is not a mode of transportation. It's a harsh and bitter verbal attack, either in writing or spoken aloud. The word comes from the Greek "dia," or "through," and "tribein," or "rub." It's literally rubbing it in.

Surviving on diet soda and instant noodles without sleep represents the low point, or nadir, of a semester. If you guessed peak, we may just have to agree to disagree. The word has Arabic roots and literally means "the opposite of the zenith."

If you have a meticulous professor, you may have a hard time pleasing them with shoddy, rushed work. Meticulous, in addition to meaning difficult to please, also refers to extreme attention to detail. What did you think you were going to get in an Ivy League school?

The vernacular is the everyday speech of a group of people and designates the speech of a particular region explicitly. Using the vernacular may not be appropriate for academic writing, but it would be the best choice for trying to communicate with a group of peers about where to eat.

The word amiable means that a person is likable and warm. An amiable waiter would visit with your table for a minute and set you at ease with their social, laid-back manner, which is much preferred to the impudent waiter who may intentionally give you the wrong food and ignore you on purpose when you don't have silverware.

When you extrapolate something, you extend the existing information or method to see how it applies elsewhere. In mathematics, this can mean continuing a graph based on the known patterns, even when you do not have the known quantities.

Obsequious behavior is obedience to the point of being servile or infantile. While professors surely appreciate compliance in the classroom, they generally do not want students to fawn and brown nose.

The word disingenuous describes someone who is insincere or is not forthright about what they know. Being disingenuous is subtly different from outright lying about something; it's more cagey, like acting like you didn't know someone lost their phone, when, really, you saw someone take it.

Repudiate can mean to reject, deny or to refuse to associate with, but in this context, the teacher most likely means that they want you to refute the critical essay's claims by proving why they are false. The word actually comes from a Latin root meaning “divorce.”