-Isms: Views on life in rural America

If I ask you to define nuance or manifest or antecedent, would you be able to provide an answer?

According to a recent study, “nuanced” is the “hardest SAT word.”

Shades of gray, I say.

Crossword experts at WordDB.com measured “the difficulty of every word listed as an answer option in the reading and writing section of the most-recent SAT practice tests.”

The study’s methodology: evaluate the number of times each state searched on Google for the definition of 257 words included in six SAT practice exams.

Back to nuanced. According to study results, the word, which translates to having multiple layers of detail or meaning, is the search subject 134,483 times a month.

Seriously? It’s a fairly common term.

You can define manifest as an adjective, correct? If you watch TikTok or IG Reels, heck - even a Progressive commercial - you’ll hear someone mention the term. In case you didn’t know, manifest means evident to the senses or apparent. Seems it’s appeared in 117,350 online searches.

Antecedent should be easy, especially if you think back to elementary grammar. The prefix “ante-” means precede or before and the suffix, “-ent,” denotes the word is a noun. If you said, “What is a preceding occurrence or cause or event” as the definition,you win $100 and get to ask the next Jeopardy question.

Other words landing in the top 10 include tentative, perceive, resilient, ensured, imminent, persistent and dynamic.

The next list of 20 words that are the most difficult on the SAT include cordially, ambivalence, delegate, exploited, acquired, inspired, prominent, indifference, perpetual and deceptive.

The former English teacher trapped in my body is skeptical that these 20 words are the most difficult on the SAT test. These are basic vocabulary terms that should be recognized and used well before grades 10 or 11.

The survey results lead me to several hypotheses.

First, we are raising a generation of non-readers, a group of youngsters who are clueless when it comes to picking apart a word to determine meaning. The Center for Longitudinal Studies purports that teens who read for pleasure every day know 26% more words than those who don’t read in their spare time. If your teenager comes from a home that believes and models the importance of the written word, they may know 42% more words than their counterparts.

Second, are or why aren’t parents and educators challenging students to expand vocabulary? I’m not talking about words like rizz and sigma, middle-school slang that’s demolishing brain cells via TikTok videos. It’s time to put the phone down and pick up a good book. It’s time to carry on a conversation.

Third, I’m wondering how difficult the SAT reading and language really is. If you can’t break down a word based on context clues, the SAT score may be the least of your worries.

Maybe after teaching “100 words high school students need to know before they graduate” for 20-some years, I’ve mastered how to draw a conclusion between a word’s denotation and connotation.

I’m curious, are their words on the list you are unsure about? Which words do you typically have to look up? Let’s have a conversation about the importance of words.