In Whitney Houston’s hit song “How Will I Know,” a shy and vulnerable young woman asks Whitney this classic question: “How will I know if he really loves me? I say a prayer with every heartbeat.” Whitney’s timeless answer is, “It’s in his kiss, that’s where it is.”
Whitney is right! There is a big difference between a passionate kiss and a PERFUNCTORY kiss. Passionate kisses are intimate expressions of a deep affection. In contrast, PERFUNCTORY kisses are routine and show little enthusiasm.
The word PERFUNCTORY appeared as the answer to a recent vocabulary in context question. Needless to say, SAT test writers did not use a kiss to illustrate PERFUNCTORY! Instead, they crafted a passage describing how the authors of television documentaries sometime rely on tired stereotypes to create PERFUNCTORY portrayals of their characters.
Hmmmm…. I think Whitney Houston’s song provides a far more vivid example of PERFUNCTORY. But as always, SAT test writers prefer tedious and boring academic examples.
PERFUNCTORY – a quick routine action that show little enthusiasm