Reason & Abstraction — C1 English Vocabulary

Using reason & abstraction words in English

This vocabulary describes degrees of knowing, and the useful axis is how much evidence each word claims. Conjecture, surmise and infer sit at different points on it. The page also contains a pair that a spellchecker cannot help you with — judicious and judicial — and a group of nouns whose rarity is worth flagging honestly before you put them in an essay.

What to watch out for

• Conjecture, surmise, infer, extrapolate

  A conjecture is a guess with little supporting evidence, and in mathematics it is a proposition not yet proved. To surmise is to conclude something from slight evidence. To infer is to draw a justified conclusion from evidence — the strongest of these, and note that the speaker implies while the listener infers. To extrapolate is to extend a known pattern beyond the data you actually have.

• Judicious is wise; judicial is about courts

  Judicious means showing good judgement: a judicious use of resources. Judicial relates to judges and the legal system: judicial review, the judicial branch. Both are real words, so nothing will flag the wrong choice. The related noun judiciary means the judges collectively; discernment and acumen are the abstract nouns closest to judicious.

• Acumen collocates narrowly; the rest are rare

  Acumen is uncountable and appears almost exclusively with a small set of modifiers: business acumen, political acumen, commercial acumen. Sagacity and perspicacity are genuinely uncommon and read as ornate in modern prose; discernment and rationality are the two on this list that sit comfortably in ordinary academic writing.

Words learners mix up

This page is largely Latinate and largely about the quality of a mind. Three clusters matter: the words for sharpness, the words for being hard to understand, and the words for thinking before you act.

Collocations that sound natural

Most of these abstract nouns appear inside one or two academic phrases. Learning the phrase gives you the register at the same time as the word.

• rigour

  intellectual rigouracademic rigourapply rigoura lack of rigour

  British English keeps the -our; the adjective drops it — rigorous, never rigourous. Uncountable.

• connotation

  carry a connotationnegative connotationsthe connotations of the word

  Countable and usually plural. It means what a word suggests beyond its literal sense, which is denotation.

• underpinning

  the theoretical underpinningthe underpinnings ofprovide the underpinning for

  Both singular and plural occur. From building work — what supports a structure from below.

• delve

  delve into the archivesdelve deeperdelve into the question

  Intransitive and always with into. It means to search thoroughly, and it is slightly more energetic than examine.

• appraise

  appraise the evidencecritically appraisea considered appraisal

  Do not confuse with apprise, which means to inform somebody: apprise the board of the risk. One letter, entirely different verbs.

• tangential

  tangential to the argumenta tangential pointgo off on a tangent

  Takes to. From geometry, where a tangent touches a curve at one point and departs — hence the idiom for wandering off topic.

See the full C1 collocations list →

Formal, neutral or informal?

Almost everything here is formal, and several items are rare enough that using them is itself a statement. Two words are commonly mispronounced and one is a near-homophone of its opposite.

• learnedTwo pronunciationsAs an adjective meaning scholarly it has two syllables — LERN-id — as in a learned journal and the courtroom address my learned friend. As the past tense of learn it has one. The spelling gives no clue.
• eruditeFormal · high praiseHaving and showing great learning. A compliment reserved for scholarship, and it describes writing and people, not ideas. The noun is erudition.
• cerebralAmbivalentIntellectual rather than emotional or physical. Applied to a film or a player it often carries a faint complaint that there is not enough feeling or instinct.
• cogitate / philosophiseMock-formalBoth mean to think deeply, and both are now used more often humorously than straight: I shall cogitate on it. In serious prose the words are consider and reflect.
• esotericNeutral · not an insultMeant for and understood by a small group. It does not mean pointless, though it is often used that way — the neutral sense simply describes a specialist audience.
• cognisanceFormal · legal · British spellingKnowledge or awareness, chiefly in take cognisance of. British English uses -isance; American writes cognizance. Rare outside legal and official registers.
• notionalTechnicalExisting only as an idea or an assumed figure: a notional value, a notional boundary. It does not mean imaginary in a dismissive sense — it is standard in finance and planning.
• mullInformal · verb onlyTo think something over unhurriedly, almost always with over. Conversational, and it sits oddly among the Latinate nouns on this page — which makes it useful when you want to lower the register deliberately.

Sentences to try

Four frames about reasoning. Ask how much evidence each verb is claiming.

• We can only conjecture about his motives.
• It would be unwise to extrapolate from a single trial.
• She showed considerable business acumen from the start.
• That was a judicious decision in the circumstances.

Questions about reason & abstraction vocabulary