You Say Potato, I Say Solanum Tuberosum

The College Board will eliminate "obscure vocabulary words" (BTW, isn't "vocabulary words" a redundancy?) from the SAT. Its January 26th press release reveals a sense of humor that the erudite educators have kept well hidden for 100 years:

New York — Throughout its 100-year history, the abstruse vocabulary words of the SAT® have engendered prodigious vexation in millions of examinees annually. On Saturday, Jan. 23, students across the country participated in the terminal transpiration of the SAT in its habituated gestalt.

To adumbrate the changes to be manifest in future administrations of the assessment: The new SAT will be more trenchant and pellucid, and the format will no longer pertinaciously reward students who punctiliously engage in the antediluvian praxis of committing idiosyncratic words to memory.

College Board President David Coleman promulgated, “Your invectives and maledictions have been heard. Clemency has been granted.”

I somewhat disagree. Rote memorization is good for the soul, praxis makes perfect, and I wish those kids would get off my lawn.