Since 1926, students have been taking the SAT (or Scholastic Assessment Test) to measure their readiness for college. The test used to be two parts — math and verbal — but to keep up with advances in education, it was changed in 2016 to contain three parts split over two sections, with one part focusing on math, another part focusing on reading skills, and a third part focusing on writing and language aptitude. The most recent update changed the SAT yet again, doing away with the No. 2 pencils and making it an entirely digital experience. This digital SAT has two sections — a reading and writing section and a math section — with two “modules” in each.

With the older format, studying and memorizing vocabulary words was a big part of test prep. However, the 2016 test and the digital test were designed to focus less on vocabulary questions, and more on skills such as comprehension, analysis, reasoning, and expression of ideas. Vocabulary is part of that, but the most common words on the test are ones students may encounter in college or the workplace. So even if you’re not taking the SAT anytime soon, knowing this list will give you a good basis for professional communication.

Abandon (v.) – Give up entirely.

Abate (v.) – Become less intense or widespread.

Abet (v.) – Assist in doing something wrong.

Accede (v.) – Agree to a demand or request.

Anomaly (n.) – Something that deviates from what is normal.

Apex (n.) – Top or highest point.

Berate (v.) – Scold or criticize.

Bias (n.) – Prejudice in favor of or against something.

Bovine (adj.) – Relating to or affecting cattle.

Braggart (n.) – Person who boasts about achievements.

Burnish (v.) – Polish by rubbing.

Cache (n.) – Collection of similar items stored in a hidden place.

Cacophony (n.) – Harsh, discordant mixture of sounds.

Catalyst (n.) – Substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction.

Censorious (adj.) – Severely critical of others.

Dearth (n.) – Scarcity or lack of something.

Demagogue (n.) – Political leader who appeals to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people.

Demur (v.) – Raise doubts or objections or show reluctance.

Disdain (n.) – Feeling something is unworthy of one’s consideration or respect.

Dispassionate (adj.) – Not influenced by strong emotion, but rational and impartial.

Effluvium (n.) – Unpleasant or harmful odor.

Emulate (v.) – Match or surpass by imitation.

Epochal (adj.) – Extremely significant.

Expound (v.) – Present and explain in detail.

Ferocity (n.) – State of being savagely fierce, cruel, or violent.

Flourish (v.) – Grow or develop in a healthy way.

Frankly (adv.) – In an open, honest, and direct manner.

Fundamental (adj.) – Forming a necessary base or core.

Galvanize (v.) – Shock or excite someone into taking action.

Geriatric (adj.) – Relating to older people.

Hedonist (n.) – Person who seeks pleasure.

Hubris (n.) – Excessive pride or self-confidence.

Impart (v.) – Make information known.

Impartiality (n.) – Fair and equal treatment of all.

Importunate (adj.) – Persistent, especially to the point of annoyance.

Imposition (n.) – Action or process of forcing something.

Indifference (n.) – Lack of interest, concern, or sympathy.

Innovative (adj.) – Introducing new or original ideas.

Jocular (adj.) – Humorous or playful.

Jubilation (n.) – Feeling of great happiness and triumph.

Kismet (n.) – Destiny or fate.

Lament (n.) – Expression of grief or sorrow.

Locomotion (n.) – Ability to move from one place to another.

Malicious (adj.) – Intending to harm.

Materialistic (adj.) – Excessively concerned with material possessions or money.

Mawkish (adj.) – Sentimental in a feeble or sickly way.

Melodramatic (adj.) – Being exaggerated, sensationalized, or overemotional.

Modest (adj.) – Unassuming or moderate in estimating one’s abilities or achievements.

Novel (n.) – Fictitious prose narrative of book-length.

Null (adj.) – Having no legal or binding force.

Onset (n.) – Beginning of something.

Opine (v.) – State one’s opinion.

Oust (v.) – Drive out or expel.

Pandemic (adj.) – Disease prevalent over a whole country or the world.

Paramount (adj.) – More important than anything else.

Patrician (n.) – Aristocrat or nobleman.

Polyglot (n.) – Knowing or using several languages.

Prestidigitation (n.) – Magic tricks performed as entertainment.

Provocative (adj.) – Deliberately causing annoyance, anger, or another strong reaction.

Quantitative (adj.) – Relating to measuring.

Quirk (n.) – Peculiar behavioral habit.

Rancor (n.) – Bitterness or resentfulness.

Refute (v.) – Prove to be wrong or false.

Resilient (adj.) – Able to recover quickly from difficult conditions.

Revile (v.) – Criticize in an abusive manner.

Rife (adj.) – Something undesirable in common occurrence.

Sanctimonious (adj.) – Making a show of being morally superior to others.

Scrupulous (adj.) – Diligent, thorough, and highly attentive to details.

Sedition (n.) – Conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against authority.

Sinecure (n.) – Position requiring little or no work but giving the holder a benefit.

Sybarite (n.) – Person who is self-indulgent in their fondness for sensuous luxury.

Tactful (adj.) – Showing sensitivity.

Taut (adj.) – Stretched or pulled tight.

Temperament (n.) – Person or animal’s nature.

Tentative (adj.) – Not certain or fixed.

Transparent (adj.) – Allowing light to pass through so objects can be seen.

Tremendous (adj.) – In a great amount or intensity.

Trounce (v.) – Defeat heavily.

Ubiquitous (adj.) – Found everywhere.

Unadorned (adj.) – Plain or simple.

Undermine (v.) – Lessen the effectiveness.

Underscore (n.) – Line drawn under a word for emphasis.

Undulate (v.) – Move with a smooth up-and-down motion.

Unilateral (adj.) – Performed by or affecting only one person or group.

Unjust (adj.) – Not behaving according to what is morally right and fair.

Unmitigated (adj.) – Absolute or unqualified.

Unprecedented (adj.) – Never done or known before.

Unveil (v.) – Remove a veil or covering.

Urge (v.) – Try earnestly or persistently to persuade.

Usury (n.) – Lending money at unlawfully high rates of interest.

Validate (v.) – Check or prove the accuracy.

Vital (adj.) – Absolutely necessary or essential.

Vow (n.) – Solemn promise.

Warrant (n.) – Justification or authority for an action, belief, or feeling.

Winsome (adj.) – Attractive or appealing.

Wry (adj.) – Using or expressing dry humor.

Xenophobe (n.) – Having a dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries.

Yeoman (n.) – Man holding and cultivating a small landed estate.

Yield (v.) – Give way to arguments, demands, or pressure.

Yowl (n.) – Loud wailing cry.

Zenith (n.) – Time at which something is most powerful or successful.

Have you ever stumbled-mumbled over a word you’re not entirely sure how to pronounce? You’re not alone. With vocabulary borrowed from myriad sources and root languages, along with some plain old made-up words, English pronunciation rules aren’t really rules. You can try to sound out words phonetically, but you’re just as likely to be wrong as you are right. And sometimes you only know words from reading, so you’ve never heard the correct pronunciation out loud. Be proud of that — it means you’re well read. Here are 15 of the most commonly mispronounced words and how to say them clearly and confidently in American English.

Healthy food lovers know the benefits of this Amazonian fruit — but how many know how to say it properly? Four letters, three syllables: “ah-sigh-EE.”

Memes aren’t a millennial invention; the word has been around since the 1970s in the sense of a cultural element that spreads rapidly. However, the advent of social media allowed this word — from the Greek mimēma, meaning “that which is imitated” — to take on a life of its own. If you’ve ever said “mee-mee,” “may-may,” or “mem,” “you’re doing it wrong” (to quote a meme). The proper pronunciation is simply “meem.”

It’s easy to get confused with this one. A lot of people say “cash-AY” because it’s so similar to “cachet,” which does have that two-syllable pronunciation. But the correct pronunciation is “cash” — that final “e” is silent. (“Cache” refers to a collection of items in a hidden place, while “cachet” means “prestige.”)

Take a cue from Cher Horowitz — who declared in Clueless that there was no point in practicing parking for her driving test, because “everywhere you go has valet” — and pronounce it “val-AY.” However, if you’re referring to the out-of-date job as a man’s personal wardrobe attendant, you can pronounce that “t” — “VAL-et.”

This one’s a little controversial. The inventor of the graphics interchange format declared that “GIF” should be pronounced with a soft “g” (like the sound in “gin”). In fact, jokes were made that “choosey developers choose GIF” — a riff on Jif peanut butter’s famous catchphrase. But many folks on the internet have gravitated toward a hard “g” sound (basically “gift” without the “t”). Some dictionaries list both versions as correct, but if you want to go with the inventor’s intent, just remember the peanut butter when you share your next GIF.

If you’re into debating politics, “electoral college” is likely in your vocabulary. For the next presidential election, make sure you have the pronunciation down. It’s pronounced “e-LEK-tor-al,” not “e-lek-TOR-al.”

Next time you’re ordering a lunchtime gyro, resolve to say the word properly. This varies somewhat based on location, but you can get it right by asking for a “YEE-roh” or “ZHIHR-oh.” And don’t forget the tzatziki, or “tsah-TSEE-key.”

Many colors are so ubiquitous that everyone knows how to pronounce their names (no questions about ROY G BIV). That’s not the case when it comes to the not-so-often-mentioned mauve, which has slightly different pronunciations in British and American English. In the Queen’s English, it rhymes with “stove,” but in the U.S., it’s “mawv.”

The next time you’re ordering a tea latte, do it with confidence. This caffeine-free tea, which means “red bush” in Afrikaans, is often mispronounced as “roo-BE-ohs,” “rooh-IH-boos,” and “ROO-bus”. The proper pronunciation is the simple “ROY-bus.”

“Chicanery” means “the use of trickery to achieve some purpose.” It is often mistakenly pronounced “chi-CAN-er-ee,” but the correct pronunciation is “shi-CANE-er-ee.” It’s a tricky word to describe tricks.

This word, meaning “the right or privilege exclusive to an individual,” is often mispronounced by forgetting the first “r,” turning the word into “PER-og-a-tive.” When speaking it, pronounce that first “r” but put the emphasis on the second syllable: “pruh-RAH-guh-tive.”

All the “o’s” in this one can make pronunciation confusing. You know how to pronounce the word “zoo,” but what about the “-logy” tacked on at the end? This suffix actually changes the pronunciation of “zoo” by breaking up the first two “o’s” into two separate syllables. It’s up to you whether to keep “zoo” or turn it into a “zoh”: “Zoo-AWL-uh-jee” and “zoh-AWL-uh-jee” are both correct.

A boatswain is a member of a ship’s crew — the person in charge of equipment and crew. This word looks like it would be pronounced as two separate words, “boat” and then “swain,” but a sailor would look at you in confusion. It’s pronounced “BOH-sun,” dropping out the “t” and the “w.”

Soldering is the act of joining metal pieces together with a low-heat metal alloy through higher heat. It looks easy enough to pronounce, but it’s another word where the pronunciation doesn’t match the spelling. The “l” is silent, so the correct pronunciation is “SOD-er.”

Bridgerton fans have a leg up here. A viscount is a lord in the peerage of Great Britain, ranking above a baron and below an earl. The word looks like it should be pronounced as “VISS-count,” but with this British aristocratic rank, the “s” is silent — it should be pronounced “VIGH-count.” Now you can read more of those period romance novels with the correct pronunciation.

The human body is amazingly complex, made up of 11 organ systems, 206 bones, and more than 640 skeletal muscles. And that’s before you get to the molecular level, where we have approximately 37.2 trillion cells. Most of us know the basic names for major body parts, but there are definitely at least a few we skipped over in anatomy class. For instance, what’s the space between our eyebrows called? What about the one between your upper lip and nose? And is there a name for the white coloring at the bottom of your nails? The next time you’re at the doctor’s office, impress her by throwing out a few of these bodily names.

Imagine there’s an itch on your back that you can’t quite manage to scratch. It’s right in the middle and always seems just a little out of reach — that spot is your acnestis, quite possibly the reason back scratchers were invented. The name comes from an ancient Greek word for “spine,” or “backbone,” and has been in English medical textbooks since the mid-18th century. However, more recent usage is mostly humorous, as pointed out by a 1927 citation in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED): “That spot known to crossword solvers as the acnestis.” (The joke is that the obscure word would only be of use to regular word-game players.)

Hold your hand up, palm facing away, and spread your fingers. Look in between your thumb and index finger, and you’ll notice a triangular depression formed in the slight webbing at the base of the joining. This deepening is sometimes called the “anatomical snuffbox.” Years ago, when ground smokeless tobacco (snuff) was more in fashion, people would place the substance in that groove and ingest it through the nose.

The canthus is the inner point where the upper and lower eyelids meet. The little red blob at the inner canthus is called the “lacrimal caruncle,” or caruncula lacrimalis. It’s the tear duct and helps keep eyes moist.

“Dimples of Venus” refers to where the sacroiliac joints lie in the tailbone area, connecting the sacrum to the ilium in the pelvis. Confused by those terms, too? The dimples of Venus are the little divots on the lower back, right above the buttocks. They’re named after Venus — the Roman goddess of beauty, equivalent to Aphrodite in Greek mythology — as they’re believed to be a mark of beauty. You might know them as “back dimples,” or even “butt dimples.”

The glabella is the flat area above the nose and between the eyebrows. The name is Latin for “smooth,” which isn’t necessarily an accurate descriptor, as many people sport the occasional hair here (kudos to Frida Kahlo for keeping the unibrow forever cool). Here’s a helpful tip: If you gently pinch and lift your glabella and it remains tented, that’s a sign of dehydration.

The white semicircle at the base of your fingernails is the lunula. It gets its name from luna, Latin for “moon,” because of its crescent shape. It’s usually most noticeable on the thumbs, but many people’s lunulae (the plural comes from Latin) are covered by the cuticle (eponychium), so don’t worry if you can’t spot it.

The vertical groove stretching from the bottom of the nose to the top of the upper lip is the philtrum. The depth, length, and width of the philtrum has historically been used in facial readings (similar to palm readings) to derive certain characteristics; supposedly, a wide philtrum indicates luck.