3 mo. ago • 92%

Need some fancy words

I'll be sitting a CAE exam this Friday and I'd enjoy learning some vocabulary I can use when doing it.

Some idiomatic expressions, collocations or just some fancy adjectives or adverbs that you think could be useful. Something that if the examiner saw would make them say wow.

There is an speaking part where it's mostly informal language that I'm going to use and a more formal writing part.

Thanks for your help.

7 comments

Since you need some quickly, I'd read some Ursula K Le Guin short stories. She's very good at using an expansive vocab fluidly and organically without overdoing it. You don't want to necessarily overdo it, it ends up sounding bad. English has so many options to choose from that you need to sprinkle in more esoteric ones tastefully to avoid coming across as foolish, pretentious, or even being intentionally obfuscatory. Unless you're a university professor, then you get unique permission to use all the weird words you want.

Some of my favorites off the top of my head: obfuscate, vehemently, scintillating, lithe, poignant, behoves, loathsome.

2
- Behove and poignant are really useful for the writing and speaking tasks. Thank you!
  
  2
  
  np. It does behove me to inform you that the word behove is almost always encountered exclusively in this particular phrasing structure. "It behoves me to..." "He/she felt/was behoved to..." and so on and so forth. It's good when you want to sound formal and just a touch antiquated while still remaining within the bounds of normalcy.
  
  With poignant, just make sure you pronounce it correctly if you use it verbally. Mispronouncing it in an exam would be a most poignant experience, and best avoided.
  
  Good luck.
  
  2
I've posted a few: https://lemmy.world/c/wotd

1
cromulent

adjective

Fine, acceptable or normal; excellent, realistic, legitimate or authentic.

embiggen

verb

To enlarge or grow; to make or become bigger.

1
https://wiktionary.org/wiki/sesquipedalian

1

You've viewed 7 comments.