Vocabulary Blog

There’s a term in language processing call an n-gram, which is a sequence of n words.  A bi-gram , for example, is a sequence of two words.

I’ve been wondering if there are common bi-grams of words in GRE and SAT vocabularies that could make it easier to determine answers to fill-in-the-blank questions.

One example might be the word halcyon.

halcyon - Calm, undisturbed, peaceful, serene.

The phrase halcyon days (also a bi-gram) is used to refer to a period of calmness during the winter.  I thought it’d be interesting to search through texts to see if most uses of halcyon follow that pattern.

Some examples I’ve found

When young, sweet love, with her luring smile,
The mystic charm-light of halcyon hours,

Bird of the sea rocks, of the bursting spray,
O halcyon bird,
That wheelest crying, crying, on thy way;

Weavers, weaving at break of day,
Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .
Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,
We weave the robes of a new-born child.

The halcyon days at length draw to a close, and sorrows “in
battalions” compel them to emigrate and bid

“Assign’d am I to be the English scourge–
This night the siege assuredly I’ll raise:
Expect St. Martin’s Summer, halcyon days,
Since I have entered into these wars.”

So total, I found two days, one hours, one wild, and one bird.  My theory unfortunately doesn’t pan out for halcyon, but I’ll keep looking.

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