College Board Chief David Coleman Loves "Synthesis." Here's Why.

Announcing changes to the SAT Wednesday, College Board president David Coleman expounded on why synthesis is the kind of word he wants to swap in for the SAT words of old. Let's take a closer look at why, starting with what Coleman had to say about the word:

The redesigned SAT will...focus on words students will use over and over again, that open worlds to them. These powerful words do not have a single meaning, but different meanings in different contexts that students need to master. For example, let's take the word synthesis. This is not an obscure word, but one students encounter everywhere. In career settings, synthetic can mean man-made or artificial, but if we're talking about chemistry, synthesis can mean to take two things and make something new. Synthesis can also be used to describe, as I just did, combining words and data to provide a new interpretation. It means to understand different sorts of evidence. To understand. So this single word synthesis is rich with meaning and power but it requires an understanding of how the word works in multiple contexts.

Coleman is right. Synthesis is a powerful word with many uses. It's also a tricky word — each use requires slightly different information about what the word means and what it can do. Here's how we explain it on its definition page in the Vocabulary.com Dictionary, always a good place to begin when breaking down a word.  

The Vocabulary.com Dictionary page will also tell you about words in the synthesis family, show you antonyms and synonyms to make synthesis more clear, give you hundreds of usage examples drawn from real world contexts in which synthesis has appeared, and provide synthesis's pronunciation. Click "Learn," and we'll start using our adaptive technology to teach you the ins and outs of synthesis via the Vocabulary.com game.

As vocabularians, we were pleased to hear Coleman conclude his overview of changes to the vocabulary portion of the exam with the pledge, "We aim to offer worthy challenges, not artificial obstacles." Certainly, synthesis has worth and challenge aplenty, and we applaud his shout-out to the word.