E's

Question 1

Echelon

Answer 1

A level, rank, or grade; the people at that level. A stratum is the same idea (strata is the plural as in rising through the upper strata/echelons of the firm).

Obtaining a job on Wall Street doesn’t guarantee access to the upper echelon of executives, where multi-million-dollar bonuses are the norm.

I’m not sure I’m cut out to analyze poetry; I find it hard to dig beyond the most accessible echelon of meaning.

Question 2

Eclectic

Answer 2

Selecting the best of everything or from many diverse sources.

Eclectic taste is helpful in being a DJ - crowds love to hear the latest hip-hop mixed with ’80s classics and other unexpected genres of music.

Question 3

Eclipse

Answer 3

One thing covering up another, such as the sun hiding the moon or a person losing attention to a more famous or talented person; to cover up, darken, or make less important.

Billy Ray Cyrus, who had a hit song, “Achy Breaky Heart,” in the ’90s, has long since found his fame eclipsed by that of his daughter, Miley.

Question 4

Effectively

Answer 4

Effectively can mean in a successful manner, as in He did the job effectively. But it can also mean in effect, but not officially. For instance, when Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States, he was incapacitated by a stroke, and some people believe that Wilson’s wife, Edith, effectively served as President. That doesn’t mean she was necessarily effective. Rather, it means that she was doing the job of the President without officially being the President.

He went on a two-week vacation without asking for time off or even telling anyone he was leaving, thus effectively resigning from his position.

Question 5

Efficacy

Answer 5

The quality quality of being able to produce the intended effect. Don’t confuse efficacy with efficiency. Something efficacious gets the job done; something efficient gets the gob done without wasting time or effort. Efficacy is frequently used in reference to medicines.

Extensive trials will be necessary to determine whether the drug’s efficacy outweighs the side effects.

Question 6

Egalitarian

Answer 6

Related to belief in the equality of all people.

It is very rare that someone turns down an offer to be knighted by the Queen of England; however, he was egalitarian enough to feel uncomfortable with the entire idea of title and royalty.

Question 7

Egregious

Answer 7

Extraordinarily or conspicuously bad; glaring.

Your conduct is an egregious violation of our Honor Code - not only did you steal your roommate’s paper and turn it in as your own, but you also sold his work to a plagiarism website so other cheaters could purchase it!

Question 8

Emancipate

Answer 8

Free from slavery or oppression. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation legally ended slavery in the U.S. In law, to emancipate a minor is to declare the child (generally a teenager) no longer under the control of his or her parents.

Question 9

Eminent

Answer 9

Prominent, distinguished, of high rank.

Question 10

Emphasize

Answer 10

Give special force or attention to.

In GRE Reading Comprehension passages, the purpose of a particular sentence could be to emphasize a point that came before.

Question 11

Empirical

Answer 11

Coming from , based, or able to be verified by experience or experimentation; not purely based on theory.

The Ancient Greeks philosophized about the nature of matter (concluding, for instance, that everything was made of earth, water, air, and fire) without any empirical evidence - the very idea of conducting experiments hadn’t been invented yet.

People always knew empirically that when you drop something, it falls to the ground; the theory of gravity later explained why.

Question 12

Emulate

Answer 12

Copy in an attempt to equal or be better than.

The ardent Star Trek fan emulated Captain Kirk in every way possible - his brash and confident leadership might have gotten him somewhere, but the women he tried to impress weren’t so impressed.

Question 13

Enigma

Answer 13

Puzzle, mystery, riddle; mysterious or contradictory person.

The enormous rock sculptures at Stonehenge are truly and enigma: were they created as part of a religious observance, in deference to a great ruler, or for some other reason?

Question 14

Enjoy

Answer 14

Enjoy means to receive pleasure from, but it also means to benefit from. Thus, it is not true that only people and animals can enjoy. For instance:

The college has long enjoyed the support of wealthy alumni.

Question 15

Ensure vs. Insure

Answer 15

If you buy insurance for something, you have insured it. If you guarantee something, you have ensured it.

If you go past this security checkpoint, I cannot ensure your safety.

Question 16

Enumerate

Answer 16

Count or list; specify one-by-one.

The Bill of Rights enumerates the basic rights held by every citizen of the United States.

Question 17

Equitable

Answer 17

Fair, equal, just.

As the university president was heavily biased towards the sciences, faculty in the liberal arts felt they had to fight to get an equitable share of funding for their departments.

Question 18

Equivalence

Answer 18

The state of being equal or essentially equal.

Question 19

Equivocal or Equivocate

Answer 19

Use unclear language to deceive or avoid committing to a position.

Not wanting to lose supporters, the politician equivocated on the issue, tossing out buzzwords related to each side while also claiming more study was needed.

Question 20

Erratic

Answer 20

Inconsistent, wandering, having no fixed course.

When someone engages in erratic behavior, family members often suspect drug or mental illness. However, sometimes the person is just building a top-secret invention in the garage!

Question 21

Erroneous

Answer 21

Mistaken, in error.

Hilda was completely unable to assemble her new desk chair after the instructions erroneously instructed her to screw the left armrest onto a small lever on the bottom of the seat.

Question 22

Erstwhile

Answer 22

Former, previous.

A novelist and erstwhile insurance salesman, he told us his story of the long road to literary success, before he was able to quit his day job.

Question 23

Escape velocity

Answer 23

The minimum velocity that an object must attain in order to completely escape a gravitational field.

Question 24

Estimable

Answer 24

Worthy of esteem, admirable; able to be estimated.

He graduated first in his class, was editor of the Law Review, and clerked for a Supreme Court judge; his resume is estimable.

Riding a roller coaster is safer than driving on the highway, but there is still an estimable risk.

Question 25

Ethos

Answer 25

The character, personality, or moral values specific to a person, group, time period, etc.

At the prep school, the young man happily settled into an ethos of hard work and rigorous athletic competition.

Question 26

Exacerbate

Answer 26

Make worse (more violent, severe, etc.), inflame.

Allowing your band to practice in our garage has greatly exacerbated my headache.

Question 27

Exacting

Answer 27

Very severe in making demands; requiring precise attention.

The boxing coach was exacting, analyzing Laila’s footwork down to the millimeter and forcing her to repeat movements hundreds of times until they were correct.

Question 28

Execute

Answer 28

Put into effect, do, perform (to execute a process). Execute can also mean enforce, make legal, carry out the terms of a legal agreement. To execute a will is to sign it in the presence of witnesses. To execute the terms of a contract is to fulfill an obligation written in the contract.

Question 29

Exhaustive

Answer 29

Comprehensive, thorough, exhausting a topic or subject, accounting for all possibilities; draining, tending to exhaust.

The consultant’s report was an exhaustive treatment of all possible options and their likely consequences. In fact, it was so exhaustive that the manager joked that he would need to hire another consultant to read the first consultant’s report.

Question 30

Exotic

Answer 30

Foreign, intriguingly unusual or strange.

Question 31

Expansionist

Answer 31

Wanting to expand, such as by conquering other countries.

Question 32

Expedient

Answer 32

Suitable, proper; effective (sometimes while sacrificing ethics)

“I need this report by 2pm, and I don’t care what you have to do to make that happen,” said the boss. “I expect you to deal with it expediently.”

When invited to a wedding you cannot attend, it is expedient to send a gift.

Question 33

Explicit

Answer 33

Direct, clear, fully revealed. Explicit in the context of movies, music, etc. means depicting or describing sex or nudity, but explicit can be used for anything (explicit instructions is a common phrase). the antonym of explicit is implicit or tacit, meaning “hinted at, implied.”

The goal of my motivational talk is to make explicit the connection between staying in school and avoiding a live of crime.

Question 34

Extraneous

Answer 34

Irrelevant; foreign, coming from without, not belonging.

This essay would be stronger if you removed extraneous information; this paragraph about the author’s life doesn’t happen to be relevant to your thesis.

Maize, which originated in the New World, is extraneous to Europe.

Question 35

Extrapolate

Answer 35

Conjecture about an unknown by projecting information about something known; predict by projecting past experience. In math and science, to extrapolate is to infer values in an unobserved interval from values in an observed interval. For instance, from the points (1, 4) and (3, 8), you could extrapolate the point (5, 12), since it would be on the same line.

No, I’ve never been to Bryn Mawr, but I’ve visited several other small, private women’s colleges in the Northeast, so I think I can extrapolate.