Back to School Vocabulary
Words that spike in lookups when students return to school
When students return to campus each year, we see a spike in lookups of terms popular in academia. We hope this list helps shed light on these words.
Definition:
: the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time
Example:
"Zubrzycki unveils the complexity of India's empire of magic when he argues that the lines among faith, mysticism, spiritualism, livelihood and entertainment cannot be discerned with ease when it comes to examining the culture of conjuring." - Uddalak Mukherjee, The Telegraph (India), September 4 2018
About the Word:
Culture has an ancestor in the Latin cultura, meaning "cultivation." Both land (agricultura) and people (cultura animi, "cultivation of the soul," in the words of the Roman Cicero) can be cultivated ("improved by labor, care, or study").
Definition:
: the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
Example:
"It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace." ― Alan Moore, Watchmen, published as a collection in 1987
About the Word:
Students study various forms of irony, ranging from dramatic irony to verbal irony. The word irony itself traces back to the Greek character Eiron, a comic underdog whose wit enabled him to triumph over the boastful Alazon.
Definition:
: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money); broadly : figurative language
Example:
"Is 'Moby Dick' a metaphor for the struggle of trying to read 'Moby Dick'?" – Tweet from @ColbertReport, August 16, 2013
About the Word:
The Greek ancestor of metaphor meant "to transfer; change." The metaphor transfers a name for something to another thing in order to suggest likeness between the two, as in Homer's repeated use of "the wine-dark sea."
A mixed metaphor combines different metaphorical images or ideas in a way that is foolish or illogical, like this quotation reported in the Chicago Tribune in 2007: "So now what we are dealing with is the rubber meeting the road, and instead of biting the bullet on these issues, we just want to punt."
Definition:
: the study of writing or speaking as a means of communication or persuasion
Example:
"The list of racial justice readings Joeckel shared contains—among other historical texts by Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. du Bois—Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” a canonical and much-anthologized work within English composition studies, and Malcolm X’s “Ballot or the Bullet” speech, another standard in college-level English rhetoric courses. " - Robert McCoy, The Daily Beast, March 1 2023
About the Word:
Since the ancients, educators have been teaching the skills of eloquent speaking and writing. (The Greek word rhētorikē literally meant "art of oratory.") But smooth talking makes people suspicious, which is why one modern sense of rhetoric is "insincere or grandiloquent language."
Definition:
: a story in which the characters and events are symbols that stand for ideas about human life or for a political or historical situation
Example:
"The Rome-New York allegory, with its blunt collision of ancient and modern, creates its own aura of temporal dislocation, as do many visual and atmospheric peculiarities." Justin Chang, The New Yorker, 27 May 2024
About the Word:
Parables, myths, and fables are all considered types of allegories, a concept dating back to ancient times - for example Plato's famous allegory of the cave, where cave-dwelling prisoners mistake shadows for reality.
The Greek ancestor of allegory means "to speak figuratively."
Definition:
: involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods
Example:
"Part of the problem is that we're bombarded by information. And so people have limited cognitive resources to try to make decisions when we're online. We're seeing lots of different types of information. And so we know from research that if I stress you out with too many tasks, our brains resort to heuristics or rules of thumb to make decisions." - USA Today (online), July 15, 2024
About the Word:
Heuristic methods help solve problems (as when the evaluation of feedback improves performance in a heuristic computer program).
This investigative approach to problem solving is found in the ancestry of heuristic: the Greek heuriskein "to discover" shares a common ancestor with the Old Irish fuar, meaning "I have found."
Definition:
: a particular theory or conception of beauty or art : a particular taste for or approach to what is pleasing to the senses and especially sight
Example:
"[Univ. of Illinois professor Cele Otnes] likens [Downton Abbey] to Mad Men - 'It's not just a television program, it's really an aesthetic' - and cites reported rises in sales of cravats, waistcoats and sherry as evidence of a 'Downton' - driven appetite for Edwardian elegance." - Jill Lawless, Associated Press, August 15, 2013
About the Word:
Aesthetic is rooted in the Greek term for "to perceive." In its plural form, aesthetics refers to a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty, art, and taste and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. This sense of the word isn't as common as the one above, but students may encounter it in course catalogs.
Definition:
: the inclusion of different types of people (such as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization
Example:
"Amherst's president, Michael A. Elliott, said the school remains committed to diversity and that it would look for new strategies to recruit a diverse student body." - Anemona Hartocollis & Stephanie Saul, The New York Times, August 31, 2024
About the Word:
Although diversity is sometimes considered a buzzword, the term first appeared in the 14th century. Between 1970 and 2000, when it became associated with multiculturalism, its use in print nearly tripled.
Definition:
: to commit literary theft : to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
Example:
"A growing group of authors are suing AI companies, alleging their work was used to train AI programs without payment or permission. And in December, the New York Times sued OpenAI, saying that ChatGPT was plagiarizing its news stories." - Gerrit De Vynck, The Washington Post, January 16, 2024
About the Word:
The seriousness of this offense is reflected in the linguistic history of plagiarize: it comes from the noun plagiary, a synonym of plagiarism that originally meant "kidnapper."
Definition:
: the art, science, or profession of teaching; especially the field of study that deals mainly with methods of teaching and learning in schools
Example:
"The lack of sound pedagogy in the proposed changes further aggravates the situation, raising concerns about the long-term impact on teaching and learning." - LiveNews.co.nz, 4 September 2024
About the Word:
Like pediatrician, pedagogy has an ancestor in ped-, meaning "child." Pedagogy dates to the late 1500s but has a recent offspring: Andragogy, meaning "the art or science of teaching adults," was coined in 1970 using andr- (meaning "man") and "agogy" from pedagogy.
