High school taught us to memorize a lot of facts that rarely came up again afterward, including the year the English navy defeated the Spanish Armada (1588) and that mitochondria are the “powerhouse of the cell.” We also learned a lot of lengthy vocabulary words in preparation for the SATs, but if you are not particularly sesquipedalian (“given to or characterized by the use of long words”),  your inchoate (“unfinished, immature”) brain might have erased many of those words. And while some of them were likely obscure, there are plenty of advanced vocabulary words that have a strong presence in everyday life.

Lots of those classic SAT words have become part of informal conversations, appearing as internet slang. In some cases, the meaning has changed or the word has been shortened. The vocabulary of internet conversations has come a long way since “You’ve Got Mail” alerts.

Charisma

“A special magnetic charm or appeal.”

This SAT word for magnetic charm or appeal is now shortened to “rizz,” keeping roughly the same definition. 

Delusional

“Relating to, based on, or marked by delusions.”

If a person believes obviously false information despite indisputable evidence, they might be “delulu,” in today’s slang.

Demure

“Marked by quiet modesty, sedate reserve, restraint, or sobriety.”

In 2024, a TikTok beauty influencer named Jools LeBron referred to her makeup as “very demure, very mindful,” and suddenly we were all using this word meaning “reserved or modest,” usually in the exact opposite context.

Feral

“Being, characteristic of, or suggesting an animal in the state of nature.”

This adjective for animals in their natural environment is now also shorthand for unhinged human behavior.

Lore

“A body of traditions relating to a person, institution, or place.”

Many people now use “lore” to refer to their own mysterious origin story. “Tell me the lore” is a request for the backstory.

Manifest

“To show plainly; make palpably evident or certain by showing or displaying.”

Traditionally, this word as a verb means “to make evident” by showing physically, but now the idea of “manifesting” is about making your own dreams come true. 

Aesthetic

“Relating to the beautiful as distinguished from the merely pleasing, the moral, and especially the useful and utilitarian.”

This word, relating to beauty and appearance, has developed a new importance thanks to visual media such as Instagram and TikTok. It’s common for someone to curate a niche aesthetic, such as “Dark Academia” or “Y2K.”

Suspicious

“Arousing or tending to arouse suspicion.”

If you’ve heard the word “sus,” you may have had a suspicion that it was short for “suspicious.” However, sometimes it means “suspect.” For example, someone might say, “Jimmy was acting pretty sus” — and they could mean “suspicious” or “suspect” (“not to be relied on or trusted; possibly dangerous or false”). As on the SATs, context clues are important to deciphering meaning. 

Grocery store labels can be confusing — could someone explain the difference between “free-range” and “cage-free” eggs? Fortunately, SAT vocabulary words are helpful in decoding some of the information.

Artisanal

“Produced in limited quantities by an artisan through the use of traditional methods.”

Meaning “hand-crafted in limited quantities,” this term suggests an artisan (a worker who practices a trade or handicraft) prepared the food with care. 

Enriched

“To make richer in some quality (as in nutritive value, savor, or beauty).”

Many cereals claim to be enriched with vitamins and minerals. Reading the label can help you determine what the ingredients are and what quantities of vitamins and minerals the food contains. 

Refined

“Free from impurities.”

This term is typically found on white sugar to indicate that it has gone through a process to make it “free from impurities.”

Heritage

“Emphasizing the traditional or nostalgic.”

As a noun, “heritage” refers to an inherited property or trait, but in the context or food, it’s usually used as an adjective. For example, heritage pork is made from rare breeds of pigs. An heirloom tomato is a varietal that is less commonly grown than most that you’ll find at the grocery store, but you’re likely to see them at farmers markets.

Authentic

“Marked by conformity to widespread or long-continued tradition.”

Something that is authentic follows traditions. For example, in order to make an “authentic” Neapolitan pizza, it requires a specific mozzarella from Italy.

SAT words often appear in news reports, which is probably why teachers encouraged you to learn them. Here are some words that might not have seemed important when you were in high school but appear regularly in the paper.

Accumulation

“The action or process of accumulating; state of being or having accumulated; a collecting together.”

In places where the precipitation can accumulate, weather reports will tally the accumulation.

Conditional

“Containing, implying, subject to, or depending on a condition.”

Laws and treaties are often conditional, meaning they depend on certain terms being met.

Deficit

“An excess of debit over credit items; deficiency in amount or quality.”

Meaning “shortfall,” this word appears everywhere a budget does, as well as in some sports reports. 

Mandate

“An authoritative command, order, or injunction; a clear instruction, authorization, or direction.”

Whether referring to an order or a requirement, a mandate is a rule, so you’ll see it in discussions about laws being made (or broken). 

Myopic

“Lacking in foresight, discernment, or liberality.”

The medical term for nearsightedness can also describe something that is shortsighted.

Auspicious

“Favoring or conducive to success; showing or suggesting that future success is likely; affording an especially favorable auspice.”

An auspicious debut is a promising start, suggesting hope and success is on the horizon. 

Catalyst

“An agent that provokes or precipitates catalysis.”

In science, a catalyst is a substance that speeds up a chemical reaction. In the news, it refers to an event or person that sparks change.

Cerebral

“Of or relating to the brain or the intellect; appealing to intellectual and critical rather than emotional appreciation.”

A review might describe a book or film as cerebral, meaning it appeals more to intellect than to emotion.

Sometimes, languages contain words that capture concepts so specific to their culture — or to some undefinable essence of that culture — that they resist direct translation. And even though an English speaker may understand the exact feeling the word conveys, it remains untranslatable, at least without using additional words to explain it. Here are some of the most fascinating words that don’t have a direct, single-word translation in English, including a Danish concept of cozy contentment and a profound Welsh word for a deep and unattainable longing. 

This Danish concept encompasses a feeling of cozy contentment and comforting, pleasurable experiences. Hygge is more than just coziness — it’s about creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying life’s simple pleasures, be it cuddling up with a cup of hot cocoa or snuggling in soft blankets. 

Type the Portuguese word saudade into a translator and you’ll probably get back “longing.” But saudade expresses much more than this simple definition. It’s more accurately a longing for someone or something you once loved, now gone forever; a bittersweet nostalgia that goes beyond simply missing someone; or an emotional state that mixes love, loss, and hope. The Portuguese writer Francisco Manuel de Melo described it as “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.”

Ubuntu, a word in the Bantu language Zulu, is often compared to “humanity.” But this one-word translation doesn’t do ubuntu justice, as it has a philosophical connotation that emphasizes the interconnectedness of individuals and collective well-being. It is sometimes translated into English as, “I am because we are,” which perhaps best approximates its complex meaning. 

This Swedish word is sometimes translated as “just the right amount” — not too little, not too much, but perfectly balanced — while also implying that something is reasonable. It can be seen as reflecting a Swedish approach to moderation, a kind of middle-of-the-road attitude that avoids both excess and limitation.

Tartle is a brilliant Scottish word — little known to English speakers and with no direct translation — that refers to the hesitation we show when we can’t remember someone’s name. It doesn’t apply when you forget the person’s name entirely — it only refers to that awful awkwardness we feel while scrabbling around in our brains to connect a name to the face. 

Ayni is an important word among the Quechua and Aymara Indigenous populations of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. In English, it can be translated as “reciprocity” or “mutualism,” but its meaning — both as a concept and as a social practice — is deeper. It implies that everything in the world is connected, and so cooperation between members of a community is a natural way of living. Ayni is sometimes translated as “today for you, tomorrow for me,” or vice versa.  

Schadenfreude is perhaps one of the most widely known words that has no direct English equivalent — hence its presence as a common loanword in the English language. It indicates the pleasure derived from someone else’s misfortune — a universal emotion for which German has given us a precise term. 

The German language is known for its various untranslatable words, but few have such an impact as backpfeifengesicht — which basically means “a face that looks like it should be slapped.” 

In 1993, a word from the Yahgan (also spelled Yagán) language of Tierra del Fuego, Chile, was recognized by Guinness World Records as the most succinct in existence: mamihlapinatapai. The British missionary and linguist Thomas Bridges, who spent 20 years living among the Yaghans in the 1800s, translated it as, “To look at each other, hoping that either will offer to do something, which both parties much desire done but are unwilling to do.” The last native speaker of Yahgan died in 2022, and the language became extinct. 

This Brazilian Portuguese word has no English equivalent, which is unsurprising considering how specific it is. In Brazil, cafuné means “to soothe someone by tenderly running one’s fingers through their hair.” 

No matter where in the world they may live, book lovers know the feeling of tsundoku. This wonderful Japanese word refers to the act of collecting a large library of unread literature. Or, as Ella Frances Sanders puts it in her book Lost in Translation, it’s the feeling of “leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with other unread books.”

Hiraeth is a highly evocative word in Wales, and one with no direct translation in English. Marian Brosschot, a Welsh language officer in Trelew, Patagonia (where, incidentally, they speak Welsh), described hiraeth to the BBC as “a kind of longing for a person, a place, or a time that you can’t get back to, a kind of unattainable longing.” 

Crossword puzzles are a part of many people’s daily routines — mine included. What began as a casual hobby has grown into a years-long obsession, as evidenced by a 1,700-day streak (and counting). In my crossword experience, I’ve come to notice some words appear more often than others, and I’m not the only one who’s observed this.

In 2013, former New York Times product engineer Michael Donohoe published data regarding the most common words in the NYT crossword from 1996 to 2012. In turn, visual data analyst Noah Veltman created a list of the most common answers, plus a separate category of words he felt demonstrated a special level of “crosswordiness” (his word). While this data is over a decade old at this point, the NYT crossword hasn’t changed in format, and I expect the data to have remained relatively consistent since 2013. In addition to being a word nerd, I can be a data nerd, too. Let’s dig into some of the most interesting findings. 

The most common crossword answers tend to be short, vowel-packed words. At the top of the list is “ERA,” appearing in 323 NYT puzzles during the aforementioned time span, which amounts to roughly 5% of the total puzzles. Rounding out the top five answers are “AREA, “ERE,” “ONE,” and “ELI.”

The reason those compact, vowel-heavy words are so common is that they provide a useful service to the crossword writers and editors. The people putting those puzzles together need a way to connect the longer, more distinctive words, and the most efficient way to do that is by implementing these briefer, more malleable pieces. 

In other words, the shorter a word is, the likelier it is to fit into those parts of the puzzle where there’s limited space. Also, the more vowels, the better, given how common those letters are in the English language. A word such as “ERE” is perfect because it can easily connect two longer words, so long as each of them contain an “E” — the most common letter in the English language.

In 2018, engineer Jonathan Tan provided an update to support Donohoe and Veltman’s original findings, expanding the data to include 1994 through 2017. The results showed the same five words listed above still topped the list. That said, Tan’s findings showed each of those words has declined slightly in its frequency since 1994, though “ERA” continues to appear in more than 20 NYT crossword puzzles each year.

What exactly does “crosswordiness” mean? Veltman coined this term to describe a certain type of crossword answer that appears particularly often, and he even devised a scientific formula to back it up. 

The easiest way to define the term comes from Veltman himself, who says, “Crossword puzzlers know that certain words that never show up in real life pop up in crosswords all the time.” In other words, words that exude “crosswordiness” are far more useful as puzzle answers than they are in any practical quotidian (a crosswordy word meaning “daily”) scenarios.

The data shows “ASEA” — meaning “on the ocean” or “in the direction of the sea” — exudes the most “crosswordiness.” This is followed by “SMEE” — the name of a pirate character in Peter Pan. In third place is “URSA,” a constellation-related answer that’s often paired with the clue “___ Major” or “___ Minor.” Personally, I always found the words “EWER” and “EPEE” (“a large jug with a wide mouth” and “a sharp-pointed dueling sword, respectively)” to fit this category, though according to Veltman’s formula, they don’t rank as highly as I would’ve guessed.

Looking to improve your crossword skills but don’t know where to begin? Familiarizing yourself with the most common words is a good first step, but that’ll only get you so far. 

To take your crossword skills to the next level, you’ll need a greater understanding of how the clues are written. Some clues contain built-in hints meant to guide you, so here are a few tips:

• If the clue is plural, so is the answer.
• If the clue contains a list connected by the word “and,” the answer is also plural. If the list is connected by “or,” the answer is singular.
• If the clue is in a foreign language, the answer will be in the same language (minus any accent marks or other diacritics).
• If the clue mentions a city or country (e.g., “Money, in Mexico”) the answer will likely be in the predominant language spoken there (“DINERO”).
• If the clue is in italics, it relates to the puzzle’s overall theme. These answers may be a bit cryptic on their own, but they will coalesce into a theme once taken all together.
• If a clue ends in a question mark, the answer likely has an unexpected meaning that incorporates some sort of wordplay (e.g., a double entendre or pun).

Follow these tips, brush up on some common crossword answers, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a skilled cruciverbalist in no time.

One of the simplest ways to instantly level up your communication is to diversify your vocabulary choices. By swapping in more sophisticated words, you can sharpen your arguments and impress your audience. 

Adverbs provide a versatile avenue to sprinkle in new words, as they modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. However, the most commonly used adverbs are “very” and “really,” which is a shame because they don’t add much to the conversation. Another overused adverb is the topic of much debate among word nerds — is it OK to use “literally” in a figurative sense? Many respected dictionaries say yes, but we encourage you to keep it to casual usage, especially if you’re trying to increase the intellectual impact of your speech. Well-deployed adverbs typically answer the key questions of the sentence — how, when, or where. This list of “smart” adverbs can help elevate your tone as you answer those details. 

The beauty of these “smart” words lies not in their syllable count but in their precision. They don’t just make you sound smart — they help you express yourself more clearly and elegantly. Songwriter Tom Waits once said, “I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.” So whether you’re trying to impress at a dinner party or seeking the best way to convey your message in writing, these words will serve you well.

“I forgot my umbrella, ergo I was soaked.”

“Traffic was terrible, hence the delay.”

“It was rather cold yesterday, despite the sunshine.”

“That was indubitably the best coffee I’ve ever had.”

“I live vicariously through her Instagram posts.”

“The meeting was ostensibly about budget cuts, but really about office politics.”

“We tacitly agreed that no one would mention the incident.”

“I seldom use words I do not understand.”

“He won presumptively, pending the recount.”

“Our opinions on pineapple pizza are diametrically opposed.”

“He willfully ignored my advice about wearing sunscreen and now resembles a lobster.”

“The story about ducklings was entertaining, even if it was just tangentially related to the budget meeting.”

“He invariably arrives 10 minutes late with a latte in his hand.”

We’ve all seen them — pedestrians creeping out into the intersection against the light, ready to dash across the street, or folks running across the roadway in the middle of a block. It’s a risky (even illegal in many places) practice, but it has a cutesy nickname. This thrill-seeking pedestrian practice is known as “jaywalking.” 

“Jaywalker” is the noun version of the intransitive verb “jaywalk,” which means “to cross a street carelessly or at an unusual or inappropriate place or in a dangerous or illegal direction so as to be endangered by the traffic.” Some cities have bigger jaywalker populations than others, especially those with major city centers such as New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Mumbai, and Seoul. 

The “jay” in the first half of the word is a type of bird, but when the term was coined, “jay” also meant “a person lacking experience (as in city ways) or polish; an unsophisticated, countrified, or gullible person.” It’s old-fashioned slang now, but in the early 20th century, a jay in a new city didn’t understand the rules and might have embarrassed themself. 

Before we had jaywalkers, though, jay-drivers were the scourge of the road — these were horse-carriage drivers who drove on the wrong side of the road. Then cars started infiltrating American cities and the term “jaywalker” entered the lexicon. In a 1911 article in the Kansas City Star, a writer spoke out against New Yorkers: “Kansas City used to consider itself a town of jay walkers. That is another line in which New York deserves the discredit of being at the front of the procession.” 

In this context, the jaywalker is someone who walks in a disorganized manner purely on the sidewalk. Like its predecessor jay-driver, the original jaywalker was a pedestrian who didn’t stay in their proper lane. In a twist on the definition of the word, the insult of “jay” was applied to New York city-dwellers ruining the orderly nature of Kansas City. 

The word “jaywalking” eventually evolved to apply to pedestrians leaving the sidewalk and bringing their disorderly ways out into the street. Many towns and cities have specific ordinances against jaywalking, which has preserved the terminology in the lexicon. Despite the perseverance of the word, we can’t condone the practice — don’t be a jay, and look both ways when you cross the street.