Vocabulary Mnemonics

March 8, 2025

Matt’s words

Nonpareil (adj):having no parallel or equal; unmatched

Mom’s popcorn is nonpareil.

Mnemonic: Non = not, pareil = parallel

Jentacular (adj):having to do with breakfast; eating breakfast as soon as you wake up

I just had a jentacular breakfast.

Mnemonic: Imagine having a “spectacular juice” as soon as you wake up. Put them together and you get “jentacular.”

Manumission (n): Release from slavery

Successive volumes of the society’s manumissionrecords are now held by the New-York Historical Society. —Carolyn Eastman, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Sep. 2024

Manumit (v): To free: George Washington manumitted his slaves when he died.

Mnemonic: To free a man from slavery you send him to a mission

Sartorial (adj):relating to clothes; tailored clothes

The sartorial splendor of a wedding…

…in the wake of sartorialutilitarianism and quiet luxury, there has been a predictable resurgence of bold leopard prints on and off the runways. —Emily Tannenbaum, Glamour, 14 Feb. 2025

Mnemonic: We sort our clothes. So pretend it’s “sortorial.” You can remember it’s “sart” because it’s turning clothes into an art form.

Mnemonic 2: You know a bad dresser Art. Constant fashion flops. You decide to hold a “Sartorial Tutorial” to help him.

Obnubilate (v): to cloud over; obscure

All the talk of Jane’s flaws obnubilated her skills.

Mnemonic: Ob is short for “obscure.” Nube means “cloud.” Put them together and you get “obscured by a cloud.”

Dr. Mom’s words

Imbroglio (n): an extremely confused, complicated, or embarrassing situation; scene caused by a scandal

I tried managing the situation on my own but was only able to put off the ensuing imbroglio for a short time.

Mnemonic: Sounds like embroil, which means to get tangled up in a possibly messy turmoil.

Friable (adj): easily crumbled; very fragile, having an extreme delicacy of construction

The sand dollars were friable, so the children had to be careful when handling them.

Mnemonic: Yes, bacon is fry-able, but if you fry it too long, it will become friable and then crumble into bits.

Facile (adj): easy to too easy; not requiring effort or involving difficulty; lacking depth

I’m not concerned … with offering any facile solution for so complex a problem. T. S. Eliot

Mnemonic: Sounds like “fast L.” When writing an L, especially a lowercase L, whether cursive or manuscript, it’s super easy.

Interpolate (v): to insert into an existing text, work, etc., especially something spurious or extraneous; in statistics, interpolation is a method of estimation

It’s always nice to see illustrations interpolated into the text when you’re introducing a new book to children.

Mnemonic: “Inter” means between, and “polate” makes us think of poles or the polar locations. You insert something into the wandering path between the poles.

Drupe (n): a type of fruit that has a stone/pit (the endocarp) inside both a thickish outerpart (the exocarp, or skin) and the delicious flesh that you eat (the mesocarp). Examples are peaches, apricots, dates, cherries, coconuts, and almonds

I love biting into a delicious drupe as long as I remember there’s a pit inside.

Mnemonic: Picture a fruit causing the branch of the tree to droop. The fruit has a heavy pit inside, so the branch droops.

COLOSSAL COMPILATION:

At your next soiree, steer clear of imbroglios by avoiding weighty topics such as manumission and instead interpolate only facile subjects into your chit chat, such as whether a drupe is nonpareil as a jentacular choice, whether cookies are most delicious when friable, or whether a person’s sartorial choices obnubilate or clarify their true personality.