{"id":2417,"date":"2011-09-22T09:06:46","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T14:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/?p=2417"},"modified":"2019-08-30T16:49:16","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:49:16","slug":"scarjos-nude-photo-scandal-some-lurid-vocabulary-about-a-salacious-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/blog\/scarjos-nude-photo-scandal-some-lurid-vocabulary-about-a-salacious-story\/","title":{"rendered":"ScarJo’s Nude Photo Scandal: Some Lurid Vocabulary About a Salacious Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/A><\/p>\n

It seems that actress Scarlett Johansson’s phone has been hacked, and her nude photos shared with the world.<\/p>\n

You may have wondered about the title of this blog post — a word commonly used to describe tabloid-style “news” stories is lurid <\/a>, which can mean “gruesome; horrible; revolting,” or simply, “glaringly vivid or sensational.” Websites that purport to show photos of famous people’s deaths are undeniably lurid<\/i>. Made-up stories about Oprah having an affair with Nick Jonas (I just made that up!) are still a bit lurid<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Another word that seems apropos is salacious<\/a>, meaning “lustful, lecherous, obscene.” I wouldn’t describe ScarJo’s leaked photos as salacious<\/i> so much as I would describe other people’s interest in looking at them that way. As in, “Honey, stop being so salacious<\/i> — shut down that celebrity website and come to dinner!”<\/p>\n

A few other words on the “sexy” side of the GRE are lewd<\/a> (inclined to, characterized by, or inciting to lust or lechery; lascivious) and lascivious<\/a> (inclined to lustfulness; wanton). Lechery<\/a> is defined in the dictionary as “unrestrained and promiscuous sexuality,” but in real life is always used in a “sexual harassment” way. A lecher<\/a> is the sort of person you’d hope you don’t end up alone with in a subway car. Lewd, lascivious, lecherous<\/i> and lecher<\/i> are all pretty bad.<\/p>\n

(Why would these ever be on the GRE? It seems unlikely that the test makers would write a question about anything lascivious<\/i>, right? If you saw one of the above words, I would suspect it to simply be a wrong answer.)<\/p>\n

A couple of less-terrible words are bawdy<\/a> and ribald<\/a>, near-synonyms that mean “indecent; lewd; obscene; coarsely mocking, abusive, or irreverent.”<\/p>\n

She loved the bawdy<\/strong><\/em> humor in Wedding Crashers, but she didn’t appreciate the lascivious<\/strong><\/em> theater attendant who asked her after the movie if she wanted to “be a bridesmaid,” whatever that meant.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bawdy<\/i> and ribald<\/i> tend to refer to “dirty jokes,” and aren’t nearly as negative as the above set of words. In fact, they could absolutely appear in a GRE sentence, as in:<\/p>\n

While today we think of opera as ______, audiences of centuries past were more attuned to — and occasionally scandalized by — the bawdy humor and ______ scenarios.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second<\/b> blank clearly calls for something that means the same as bawdy<\/i> — so, ribald<\/i> would be a good match. The “while” at the beginning of the sentence means that the first<\/strong> blank goes in an opposite direction, so the first blank should contain a word that means “not bawdy” — something like staid, proper, conservative<\/i>.<\/p>\n

So, let’s address the TMZ article above. The photos were hacked by scofflaws<\/i>? What on earth are those?<\/p>\n

As you might guess, they are people who scoff<\/a> at (that is, mock, jeer, or deride) the law! What a great word.<\/p>\n

Scofflaw<\/a> – a person who flouts the law, especially one who fails to pay fines owed; a person who flouts rules, conventions, or accepted practices.<\/p>\n

Where do scofflaws<\/i> belong? See this previous post about “hoosegow”<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems that actress Scarlett Johansson’s phone has been hacked, and her nude photos shared with the world. You may have wondered about the title of this blog post — a word commonly used to describe tabloid-style “news” stories is lurid , which can mean “gruesome; horrible; revolting,” or simply, “glaringly vivid or sensational.” Websites […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vocabulary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7223,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2417\/revisions\/7223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2417"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}