Vocabulary Mnemonics

June 21, 2025

Matt’s words

Hotch (v):  to fidget; shift one’s weight from one foot to the other

As his parents interrogated him about the broken window, Johnny started biting his nails and hotching.

Mnemonic: Think of hop scotch – it’s almost like a portmanteau. You’re always jumping on one or two feet, shifting your weight.

Verklempt (adj): overcome with emotion; choked up

I always get verklempt at a funeral.

When one of her students, gazing up at the poster prominently displayed in Mags’ office, asks about that movie, Mags gets all verklempt, the memory of her youthful optimism rising to the surface. —Sheri Linden, HollywoodReporter, 6 June 2025

Mnemonic: Rhymes with contempt, which can also cause emotion.

You see someone getting choked up and ask them what’s wrong. They say theyr’e felling [unintelligible]. Did you say you’re feeling contempt? No, verklempt.

Rapprochement (n): making peace; establishing cordial relations (usually between two nations)

But there have been some signs of rapprochement, with the country’s leaders now reportedly being on a first name basis after several phone calls. —Sophie Kiderlin, CNBC, 5 June 2025

Mnemonic: Comes from re-approach in middle French. And the “ma” part might mean making peace with your mom.

Cwm (n): bowl-shaped, steep-walled area formed by a glacier; like an amphitheater; forms the end of a valley

It’s a Welsh word, and is one of the few without a vowel.

After the steep climb, we next passed through a cwm…

Now, just one remains, lodged into a cwm west of Pico Humboldt.—The Economist, 5 Oct. 2017

Mnemonic: Think of “Cup with milk”

Equiponderate (v): to counterbalance or offset in weight, force, or importance     

When forming a team, you need to equiponderate the strengths and weaknesses of each team member.

Mnemonic: Equi means equal. Ponder means to weigh.

Dr. Mom’s words

Fungible (adj): A product or commodity is replaceable by another identical item; mutually interchangeable

Managers typically use more than a hundred different lineups over the course of the season. Batting orders are so fungible that few players last long in one spot. –Tom Verducci

Because money is fungible, I paid some of my rent with the money my sister gave me for our phone bill.

Mnemonic: “Fungible” shares Latin origins with “function.” Combining the two with another “fun” word, “fund,” think, “Funds are functionally fungible.”

Pareto Principle (n): Also known as the 80/20 rule, this principle suggests that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes. Basically, a small proportion of something has the biggest effect.

Business example: 80% of a company’s revenue comes from 20% of the customers.

Time management example: 20% of tasks might contribute to 80% of your productivity.

Mnemonic: “Pair 8-0.” The pair with 8-0 is 2-0, or 20. It’s the 80/20 rule.

Savory (adj): food with a pleasing, often spicy or salty, taste that is not sweet; piquant (Ep. 12). Also, morally exemplary (as opposed to “unsavory”)

At our dinner parties, we aim to have both sweet and savory aromas wafting from the kitchen.

Those tempted toward savories can nibble on smoked-salmon or lobster-rémoulade tea sandwiches.

—Andy Birsh

Mnemonic: Savory food is flavory, complex, hard to explain; the alternative is straight-up sugary and sweet.

Anon (adj): at once, soon, presently, or later

From Juliet to her nurse in Romeo and Juliet: “I come, anon.”

We’ll have an update on the summer soiree anon.

Ever and anon the furnaces far below its ashen cone would grow hot and with a great surging and throbbing pour forth rivers of molten rock from chasms in its sides. The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

Mnemonic: You can imagine someone responding as to when something will happen, “Uh, noon,” (thus adding an “o” and forming “a-noon”). Or, by changing the last letter, “anon” becomes “anow.”

Nebulous (adj): in the form of a cloud or haze; also, an idea or concept that is unclear, ill-defined, vague

The psychic made nebulous references to a future filled with change.

In De Palma’s hands, Ethan’s big-screen debut is a labyrinthine whodunnit in which truth itself is nebulousat best. —Will Harris, EW.com, 23 May 2025

Mnemonic: A nebula is a distant galaxy or interstellar cloud of gas or dust. Something that is nebulous is cloudy, dust-covered, hard to “see,” metaphorically.

COLOSSAL COMPILATION:

If I can get myself to stop hotching for a moment, I become verklempt over the fungible state of nebulous rapprochement I have anon with my unsavory neighbors across the cwm, not in the proportions of the Pareto principle but more equiponderately.