Chris Lele

SAT Vocab Monday: Words for Springtime!

It’s springtime! Whether that means you want to exercise your green thumb (your penchant for gardening) or that the hills around you turn a luxuriant green, sending pollens and spores wafting in the hair towards your hapless sinuses, springtime has a distinct meaning for you.


 

Proliferate

To grow and multiply rapidly is to proliferate. What better word for spring (though some below are pretty good) to capture the proliferation of life (notice the “pro” and “life”)? Flowers, plants, and weeds proliferate. More abstract (and sometimes bad) things can proliferate. Youtube videos of cats (sort of bad), nuclear weapons (definitely bad) and reality television (unequivocally bad) have all proliferated. And internet memes? Talk about proliferation (hmm..maybe somebody can turn that into a meme!)
 

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Profusion

From the Latin for “to pour out,” profusion describes anything that occurs in large quantities. For those with allergies, a profusion of flowers has led to a profusion of pollen, which has led to a profusion of used Kleenexes.
 

Burgeon

From the old French for bud, to burgeon implies the sudden growth of something. The word doesn’t just have to relate to the profusion of flowers that attend spring. More generally, burgeoning can be good (burgeoning profits) or it can be bad (burgeoning crime), but if it’s burgeoning it’s growing rapidly (just like your vocabulary!)
 

Florid

Springtime and flowers. Florid must mean producing lots of flower, then. Well, no. At least not in the literal sense. Florid describes something that is overly ornate and fancy.

Usually the word describes prose in which the person likes to use big words to sound fancy, e.g., springtime is a veritable burgeoning of life, a profusion of proliferation, from the tiniest dust mite to the august bear awakening from its brumal slumber. (Btw, please don’t ever write like that.)

 

Author

  • Chris Lele

    Chris Lele is the Principal Curriculum Manager (and vocabulary wizard) at Magoosh. Chris graduated from UCLA with a BA in Psychology and has 20 years of experience in the test prep industry. He’s been quoted as a subject expert in many publications, including US News, GMAC, and Business Because. In his time at Magoosh, Chris has taught countless students how to tackle the GRE, GMAT, SAT, ACT, MCAT (CARS), and LSAT exams with confidence. Some of his students have even gone on to get near-perfect scores. You can find Chris on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook!

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