Make Your Point > Archived Issues > PRECOCIOUS
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Did anyone else originally learn the word precocious from the movie Mary Poppins? It's in a song:
The word "precocious" traces back to the Latin praecox, meaning "maturing early." (Prae means "early or before," and the rest traces back to coquere, "to mature, to ripen, or to cook.")
Part of speech:
Pick the formal, common, positive word "precocious" when you want to describe a young child whose intellect or ability is so well-developed that it startles you.
"She was smiling the smile of a precocious child who knew she had said the right thing."
Explain the meaning of "precocious" without saying "wise beyond one's years" or "skilled beyond one's years."
In the novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the narrator observes, "It was sad the way they were still babies of four and five years of age but so precocious about taking care of themselves."
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
1.
The opposite of PRECOCIOUS is
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