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GRE Vocabulary > Deck 3 > Flashcards

Deck 3 Flashcards

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1
Q

hitch

A

noun: a temporary difficulty that causes a short delay

Due to a slight technical hitch the concert will be starting half an hour late.

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2
Q

consortium

A

noun: an organization of several businesses or banks joining together as a group for a shared purpose

a consortium of textile manufacturers

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3
Q

rampant

A

adjective: (of something bad) getting worse quickly and in an uncontrolled way

rampant corruption

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4
Q

impervious

A

adjective: If someone is impervious to something,they are not influenced or affected by something

He is impervious to criticism and rational argument.

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5
Q

convivial

A

adjective: friendly and making you feel happy and welcome

a convivial atmosphere/host

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6
Q

quaff

A

verb: to drink something quickly or in large amounts

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7
Q

libation

A

noun: an amount of alcoholic drink poured out or drunk in honour of a god or a dead relation

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8
Q

dilettante

A

noun: an amateur who engages in an activity without serious intentions and who pretends to have knowledge

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9
Q

taciturn

A

adjective: habitually reserved and uncommunicative

While the CEO enthusiastically shares his plans and agenda with all who will listen, the CFO is far more taciturn, rarely revealing his perspective.

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10
Q

intrepid

A

adjective: fearless

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11
Q

inimical

A

adjective: hostile (usually descrives conditions or environments)

venus, with a surface temperature that would turn rubber to liquid, is inimical to any form of life.

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12
Q

sanction

A

verb: give authority or permission to

The authorities have sanctioned the use of the wilderness reserve for public use; many expect to see hikers and campers enjoying the park in the coming months.

noun: a legal penalty for forbidden action

International sanctions have been placed on certain shipping lanes that were thought to be involved in human trafficking.

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13
Q

gauche

A

adjective: lacking social polish

Sylvester says the most gauche things, such as telling a girl he liked that she was much prettier when she wore makeup.

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14
Q

pedestrian

A

adjective: lacking imagination

While Nan was always engaged in philosophical speculation, her brother was occupied with far more pedestrian concerns: how to earn a salary and run a household.

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15
Q

inveterate

A

adjective: habitual

He is an inveterate smoker and has told his family that there is now way he will ever quit.

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16
Q

vacillate

A

verb: be undecided about something; waver between conflicting positions or courses of action

Some students vacillate between schools when deciding which to attend, while others focus only on one school.

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17
Q

tempered

A

adjective: moderate in effect

The wide-eyed optimism of her youth was now tempered after she had worked many years in the criminal justice system.

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18
Q

arcane

A

adjective: requiring secret or mysterious knowledge

Most college fraternities are known for arcane rituals that those hoping to join the fraternity must learn.

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19
Q

munificent

A

adjective: very generous

uncle Charley was known for his munificence, giving all seven of his nephews lavish Christmas presents each year.

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20
Q

brazen

A

adjective: unrestrained by convention or propriety

Their large “donations” to the local police department gave the drug cartel the brazen confidence to do their business out in the open.

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21
Q

accolade

A

noun: an award or praise granted as a special honor

Jean-Paul Sartre was not a fan of accolades, and as such, he refused to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964.

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22
Q

austere

A

adjective:
1) practicing self-denial

His lifestyle of revelry and luxurious excess could hardly be called austere.

2) unadorned in style or appearance

Late Soviet architecture, although remaining largely austere, moved into experimental territory that employed previously unused shapes and structures.

3) harsh in manner of temperament

The principal of my elementary school was a cold, austere woman; I could never understand why she chose to work with children.

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23
Q

trite

A

adjective: repeated to often, overfamiliar through overuse

Many style guides recommend not using idioms in writing because these trite expressions are uninteresting and show a lack of imagionation on the part of the writer.

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24
Q

rescind

A

verb: cancel officially

The man’s driver’s license was rescinded after this tenth car accident.

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25
Q

hegemony

A

noun: dominance over a certain area

Until the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1587, Spain had hegemony over the seas, controlling waters stretching as far as the Americas.

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26
Q

constituent

A

noun:
1) a citizen who is represented in a government by officials for whom he or she votes
2) an abstract part of something

The constituents of the metal alloy are nickel, copper, and tin.

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27
Q

poignant

A

adjective: emotionally touching

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28
Q

ostracize

A

verb: exclude from a community or group

Later in his life, Leo Tolstoy was ostracized from the Russion Orthodox Church for his writings that contradicted church doctrine.

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29
Q

foment

A

verb: try to stir up public opinion

After having his pay cut, Phil spread vicious rumors about his boss, hoping to foment a general feeling of discontent.

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30
Q

reverent

A

adjective: feeling or showing profound respect or veneration

The professor could speak objectively about the other composers, but he always lectured about Brahms with a particularly reverent air, unable to offer a single criticism of his compositions.

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31
Q

winsome

A

adjective: charming in a childlike or naive way

She was winsome by nature, and many people were drawn to this free and playful spirit.

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32
Q

inscrutable

A

adjective: not easily understood; unfathomable

His speech was so dense and confusing that many in the audience found it inscrutable.

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33
Q

prolific

A

adjective: intellectually productive

Schubert was the most prolific composer, producing hundreds of hours of music before he died at the age of 31.

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34
Q

pernicious

A

adjective: exceedingly harmful; working or spreading in a hidden and injurious way

The most successful viruses are pernicious: an infected person may feel perfectly healthy for several months while incubating and spreading the virus.

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35
Q

haphazard

A

adjective: marked by great carelessness; dependent upon or characterized by chance

Many golf courses are designed with great care, but the greens on the county golf course seem entirely haphazard.

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36
Q

antithetical

A

adjective: sharply contrasted in character or purpose

His deep emotional involvement with these ideas is, in fact, antithetical to the detachment Buddhism preaches.

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37
Q

propitious

A

adjective: presenting favorable circumstances; likely to result in or show signs of success

The child’s heartbeat is still weak, but I am seeing many propitious signs and I think that she may be healing.

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38
Q

scrupulous

A

adjective:
1) characterized by extreme care and great effort

Because of his scrupulous nature, Mary put him in charge of numbering and cataloging the entire collection of rare stamps.

2) having a sense of right and wrong; principled

Everyone trusted he said and followed his example because he was scrupulous and honest.

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39
Q

erudite

A

adjective: having or showing profound knowledge

Before the Internet, the library was typically where you would find erudite readers.

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40
Q

capricious

A

adjective: determined by chance or impulse or whim rather than by necessity or reason

Nearly every month our capricious CEO had a new plan to turn the company around, and none of them worked because we never gave them the time they needed to succeed.

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41
Q

nuance

A

noun: a subtle difference in meaning or opinion or attitude

Because of the nueances involved in this case, I hired an outside consultant to advise us and help.

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42
Q

pejorative

A

adjective: expressing disapproval (usually refers to a term)

Most psychologists object to the pejorative term “shrink”, believing that they expand the human mind, not limit it.

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43
Q

misconstrue

A

verb: interpret in the wrong way

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44
Q

elicit

A

verb: call forth (emotions, feelings, and responses)

Just smiling - even if you are depressed - can elicit feelings of pelasure and happiness.

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45
Q

edifying

A

adjective: enlightening or uplifting so as to encourage intellectual or moral improvement

I recently read an article in the Times about whether good literature is edifying or not; specifically, does reading more make a person more moral.

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46
Q

rebuke

A

verb: cricize severely or angrily; censure

The police chief rebuked the two officers who irresponsible decisions almost led to the deaths of seven innocent by-standers.

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47
Q

imprudent

A

adjective: not wise

Hitler, like Napoleon, make the imprudent move of invading Russia in winter, suffering even more casualties than Napolean had.

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48
Q

transient

A

adjective: lasting a very short time

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49
Q

disseminate

A

verb: cause to become widely known

Before the effects of anesthesia were disseminated, patients had to experience the full pain of surgery.

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50
Q

timorous

A

adjective: timid by nature or revealing fear and nervousness

Since this was her first time debating on stage and before an audience, Di’s voice was timorous and quiet for the first 10 minutes.

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51
Q

contrition

A

noun: the feeling of remorse or guilt that comes from doing something bad

Those who show contrition during their prison terms - especially when under review by a parole board - often get shortened sentences.

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52
Q

mundane

A

adjective:
1) repetitive and boring; not spiritual

Nancy found doing dishes a thoroughly mundane task, although Peter found a kind of Zen pleasure in the chore.

2) relating to the ordinary world

Though we think of the pope as someone always dealing in holy matters, he is also concerned with mundane events, such as deciding when to set his alarm each morning.

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53
Q

appease

A

verb: pacify by acceding to the demands of

Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister during WWII, tried to appease Hitler and in doing so sent a clear message: you can walk over us.

54
Q

arduous

A

adjective: demanding considerable mental effort and skill; testing powers of endurance

55
Q

askance

A

adverb: with a look of suspicion or disapproval

The old couple looked askance on the teenagers seated next to then, whispering to each other, “They’ve got rings through their noses and purple hair!”.

56
Q

polemic

A

noun: a strong verbal or written attack on someone or something.

The professor launched into a polemic, claiming that Freudian theory was a pack of lies that absolutely destroyed European literary theory.

57
Q

dispassionate

A

adjective: unaffected by strong emotion of prejudice

A good scientist should be dispassionate, focusing purely on what the evidence says, without personal attachment.

58
Q

maverick

A

noun: someone who exhibits great independence in thought and action

Officer Kelly was a maverick, rarely following police protocols or adopting the conventions for speech common among his fellow officers.

59
Q

delenterious

A

adjective: harmful to living things

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was deleterious to the fishing industry in the southern states.

60
Q

dilatory

A

adjective: wasting time

Lawyers use dilatory tactics so that it takes years before the case is actually decided.

61
Q

harried

A

adjective: troubled persistently espeically with petty annoyances

With a team of new hires to train, Martha was constantly harried with little questions and could not focus on her projects.

62
Q

reproach

A

verb: to express criticism towards

At first, Sarah was going to yell at the boy, but she didn’t want to reproach him for telling the truth about the situation.

63
Q

opulence

A

noun: wealth as evidence by sumptuous living

64
Q

esoteric

A

adjective: confined to and understandable by only an elightened inner circle

Map collecting is an esoteric hobby to most, but to geograph geeks it is a highly enjoyable pastime.

65
Q

truncate

A

verb: reduce the length of something

The soccer game was truncated when the monsoon rain began to fall.

66
Q

bolster

A

verb: support and strengthen

The case for the suspect’s innocence was bolstered considerably by the fact that neither fingerprints not DNA were found at the scene.

67
Q

maladroit

A

adjective: clumsy

As a child she was quite maladroit, but as an adult, she has become an adept dancer.

68
Q

flux

A

noun: a state of uncertainty about what should be done (usually following some important event)

Ever since Elvira resigned as the head of marketing, everything about our sales strategy has been in a state of flux.

69
Q

stringent

A

adjective: demanding strict attention to rules and procedures

Most of the students disliked the teacher because of his stringent homework policy, but many students would later thank him for demanding so much from them.

70
Q

craven

A

adjective: pathetically cowardly

Though the man could have at least alerted the police, the crouched cravenly in the corner as the old woman was mugged.

71
Q

furtive

A

adjective: marked by quiet and caution and secrecy; taking pains to avoid being observed

While at work, George and his boss Regina felt the need to be as furtive as possible about their romantic relationship.

72
Q

duress

A

noun: compulsory force or threat

The witness said he signed the contract under duress and argued that the court should cancel the agreement.

73
Q

banality

A

noun: a trite or obvious remark

74
Q

posit

A

verb: assume as fact

Initally, Eisntein posited a repulsive force to balance grafity, but then rejected that idea as a blunder.

75
Q

fastidious

A

adjective: overly concerned with details; fussy

Whitney is fastidious about her shoues, arranging them on a shelf in a specific order, each pair evenly spaced.

76
Q

indecorous

A

adjective: not in keeping with accepted standards of what is right or proper in polite society

Eating with elbows on the table is consiered indecorous in refined circles.

77
Q

efficacious

A

adjective: producing the intended result

Since Maggie’s cough syrup, which had experienced five years back, was no longer efficacious, she coughed through the night.

78
Q

economical

A

adjective: avoiding waste, efficient

79
Q

nonplussed

A

adjective: unsure how to act or respond

Shirley was totally nonplussed when the angry motorist cut her off and then stuck his finger out the window.

80
Q

antipathy

A

noun: an intense feeling of dislike or aversion

81
Q

mendacity

A

noun: the tendency to the untruthful

I can forgive her for her mendacity but only because she is a child and is seeing what she can get away with.

82
Q

specious

A

adjective:

1) based on pretense; deceptively pleasing

Almost every image on TV is specious and not to be trusted.

2) plausible but false

He made a career out of specious arguments and fictional lab results, but lost his job and reputation when his lies were exposed.

83
Q

ignominious

A

adjective: (used of conduct or character) deserving or bringing disgrace or shame

Since the politician preached ethics and morality, his texting of revealing photographs was ignominious, bringing shame on both himself and his party.

84
Q

erratic

A

adjective: unpredictable; strange and unconventional

85
Q

indignant

A

adjective: feeling anger over a perceived injustice

When the cyclist swerved into traffic, it forced the driver to brake and elicited an indignant shout of “Hey, punk, watch where you’re going!”.

86
Q

telltale

A

adjective: revealing

The many telltale signs of chronic smoking include yellow teeth, and a persistent, hacking cough.

87
Q

censor

A

verb: to examine and remove objectionable material

Every fall, high school English teachers are inundated by requests to censor their curriculum by removing The Catcher in the Rye and Scarlet Letter from their reading list.

noun: an official who censors material

The censor insisted that every reference ot drugs should be removed from the manuscript.

88
Q

thoroughgoing

A

adjective: very thorough; complete

As a thoroughgoing bibliophile, one who had turned his house into a veritable library, he shocked his friends when he bought a Kindle.

89
Q

reprobate

A

noun: a person without morals who is disapproved of

Mr. Smith’s two boys couldn’t be more different; one was a hard-working and principled, the other was the town reprobate, always having run-ins with the law.

90
Q

inflammatory

A

adjective: extremely controversial, incendiary

91
Q

demean

A

verb: to insult; to cause someone to lose dignity or respect

At first the soccer players bantered back and forth, but as soon as one of the players became demeaning, calling the other’s mother a water vuffalo, the ref whipped out a red card.

92
Q

indigenous

A

adjective: originating in a certain area

93
Q

voracious

A

adjective: very hungry, approaching an activity with gusto

Steven was a voracious reader, sometimes finishing two novels in the same day.

94
Q

tirade

A

noun: an angry speech

In terms of political change, a tirade oftentimes does little more than make the person speaking red in the face.

95
Q

acme

A

noun: the highest point of achievement

The new Cessna airplanes will be the acme of comfort, offering reclining seats and ample legroom.

96
Q

affable

A

adjective: likeable, easy to talk to

For all his surface affability, Marco was remarkably glum when he wasn’t around other people.

97
Q

embroiled

A

verb: involved in argument or contention

98
Q

miser

A

noun: a person who doesn’t like to spend money (because they are greedy)

Monte was no miser, but was simply frugal, wisely spending the little that he earned.

99
Q

hound

A

verb: to pursue relentlessly

An implacable foe of corruption, Eliot Ness hounded out graft in all forms - he even helped nab Al Capone.

100
Q

dupe

A

verb: to trick or swindle
noun: a person who is easily tricked or swindled

101
Q

tender

A

verb: offer up something formally

The government was loath to tender more money in the fear that it might set off inflation.

102
Q

retiring

A

adjective: to be shy, and to be inclined to retract from company

Nelson was always the first to leave soirees - rather than nill about with “fashionable” folk, he was retiring, and preferred the solitude of his garret.

103
Q

remiss

A

adjective: to be negligent in one’s duty

Remiss in his duty to keep the school funcitoning efficiently, the principal was relieved of his position after only three months.

104
Q

inundate

A

verb: to flood or overwhelm

105
Q

vindictive

A

adjective: to have a very strong desire for revenge

106
Q

serendipity

A

noun: the instance in which an accidental, fortunate discovery is made

107
Q

bellicose

A

adjective: warlike; inclined to quarrel

Known for their bellicose ways, the Spartans were once the most feared people.

108
Q

imponderable

A

adjective: impossible to estimate or figure out

According to many lawmakers, the huge variety of factors affecting society make devising an efficient healthcare system an imponderable task.

109
Q

chauvinist

A

noun: a person who believes in the superiority of their group

110
Q

animosity

A

noun: intense hostility

The governor’s animosity toward his rival was only imflamed when the latter spread false lies regarding his first term.

111
Q

extenuating

A

adjective: making less guilty or more forgivaable

The jury was hardly moved by the man’s plea that his loneliness was an extenuating factor in his crime of dognapping a prized pooch.

112
Q

fleece

A

verb: to deceive

Many people have been fleeced by Internet scams and never received their money back.

113
Q

moment

A

noun: significant and important value

Despite the initial hullabaloo, the play was of no great moment in Hampton’s writing career.

114
Q

stem

A

verb: to hold back or limit the flow or growth of something

To stem the tide of applications, the prestigious Ivy requires that each applicant score at least 330 on the Revised GRE.

115
Q

lassitude

A

noun: extreme tiredness, either mental or physical

116
Q

becoming

A

adjective: appropriate, and matches nicely

Her dress was becoming and made her look even more beautiful.

117
Q

paucity

A

noun: a lack of something

There is a paucity of jobs hring today that require menial skills.

118
Q

vicarious

A

adjective: felt or undergone as if one were taking part in the experience or feelings of another

The advent of twitter is a celebrity stalker’s dream, as he or she can experience the vicarious thrill of living the life of a famous person.

119
Q

start

A

verb: to suddenly move in a particular direction

All alone in the masion, Henrietta started when she heard a sound.

120
Q

sanctimonius

A

adjective: making a show of being pious; holier-than-thou

Even during the quiet sanctity of evening prayer, she held her chin high, a sanctimonious sneer forming on her face as she eyed those who were attending church for the first time.

121
Q

contrite

A

adjecitve: to be remorseful

Though he stole his little sister’s licorice stick with malevolent glee, Chucky soon became contrite when his sister wouldn’t stop crying.

122
Q

scintillating

A

adjective: describes someone who is brilliant and lively

Richard Feynman was renowned for his scintillating lectures.

123
Q

cogent

A

adjective: clear and persuasive

A cogent argument will change the minds of even the most skeptical audience.

124
Q

raft

A

noun: a large number of something

125
Q

checkered

A

adjective: marked by disreputable or unfortunate happenings

One by one, the presidential candidates dropped out of the race, their respective checkered pasts sabotaging their campaigns.

126
Q

preemptive

A

adjective: done before someone else can do it

Just as Martha was about to take the only cookie left on the table, Noah preemptively swiped it.

127
Q

desecrate

A

verb: to willfully violate or destroy a sacred place

After desecrating the paraoh’s tomb, the archaeologist soon fell victim to a horrible illness.

128
Q

pittance

A

noun: a small amount (of money)

Vinny’s uncle beamed smugly about how he’s offered his nephew fifty dollars for his Harvard tuition; even twice the amoung would have been a mere pittance.

129
Q

corroborate

A

verb: to confirm or lend support to (usually an idea or claim)

Her claim that form populations were falling in Central America was corroborated by locals, who reported that many species of frogs had seemingly vanished overnight.

130
Q

immaterial

A

adjective: not relevant

The judge found the defendant’s comments immaterial to the trial, and summarily dismissed him from the witness stand.

GRE Vocabulary (11 decks)

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