Meta

[met - uh]

Meta means self-referential, especially as a parody.

Sign up for any art school or even liberal arts school, and you’ll start to think “meta” means “cool.” Don’t be tricked, it only means cool in the self-referential parody sense of the term.

Use meta in a sentence:

“Dude, you have to see Scream 4. It’s a horror movie within a horror movie within a horror movie.”

“Wow, that’s so meta.”

Existential

[eg-zi-sten-shuh'l, ek-si-]

Existentialism is a complex philosophy that most people boil down to one simple message: Life is meaningless. Existential is the adjective that comes from this philosophy.

If you’re planning to be a Lit or philosophy major, you’ll hear this one a lot. Especially around sophomore year when the student population realizes they can’t graduate college and get paid to read dusty books all day.

Use existential in a sentence:

“I’m paying 45K a year for a degree that won’t help me get a job or better humanity or even really learn anything. I’m totally having an existential crisis right now.”

Hegemony

[hi-jem-uh-nee,  hej-uh-moh-nee]

Okay, so you might not be throwing around this word at parties, but if you study history or anything related to war or sociology,  you’ll probably hear professors push it out there.

Hegemony is technically an indirect control of one nation over another through political, social or lingual influence. Yet cultural hegemony is most commonly addressed today (i.e. jocks ruling nerds or McDonalds taking over the world.)

Use hegemony in a sentence:

“The hegemony of athletes at our state university pressures even the computer science majors to sign up for gym memberships.”

Freud

[froid]

The father of psychoanalysis and the still controversial theory of the Oedipus complex, Freud is probably (read: definitely) the most famous psychologist of all time. If you’ve never heard of him or even watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, please Google both and head to Blockbuster.

Unless you’re a psych major, that’s all you need to know. Nobody cares much about Freud nowadays, but your professors will get a kick out of it if you cite him in a term paper — It’s totally retro.

Use Freud in a sentence:

“What’s Freud?”

“Umm…how are you in college?”

Integral

[in-ti-gruhl, in-teg-ruhl]

An integral is a mathematical concept and symbol (see left). Along with the derivative, it is one of the fundamental principles of Calculus.

If you don’t know what an integral is, it means that you never took calculus in high school. Or if you did, you weren’t awake for a single second of it.

Use integral in a sentence:

“If you don’t know what an integral is, you probably won’t get into MIT.”