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<p>I would assume you expect to have a life after taking the SAT. Calling a bayou a bog results in you not understanding the meaning of two words.</p>
<p>What if bayou comes up in a reading passage? In an essay? Job interview? Same for bog.</p>
<p>Arroyo is a word that is in common use in a significantly large portion of the country. An no, an arroyo is not the same thing as a bayou.</p>
<p>The purpose of learning words is to be educated. So you can express yourself succinctly when you want your opinion heard. Nobody will care whether you got a 720 or a 760 or a 600 on your SAT for 80% of your life. People will care if you are articulate and can express yourself.</p>
<p>Don't set the bar so low that all you need to do with a word is have a vague idea of what it means so you can answer a sentence completion.</p>
<p>The average education person know anywhere from 20,000 to 65,000 words, depending on how "word" is defined and who you ask. Most "complete" dictionaries contain about half a million definitions. An average person uses roughly 2,000 to 10,000 words every week, again depending on who you ask.</p>
<p>Expose yourself to new words and understand them in the context of reading, speaking and writing on an educated level, and you won't have to worry about remembering the meaning of a word on the December SAT that you memorized -- and forgot -- for the October SAT.</p>