GRE - Day 1

Question 1

Abscond

Answer 1

elope, disappear, depart secretly (फरार)

• Satisfied, the cop went off to collect, leaving Thurston and his wife to abscond.
• You know the food is really good when a bunch of foodies are devising clever ways to abscond with a whoopie pie after an epic 20-dish meal.
• Paul Michael Barrett Austin may seem quiet, but he’s been secretly cooking the books in order to abscond with a large amount drawn from the regional office’s bank account.

Question 2

Abate

Answer 2

reduce, decrease, diminish, conclude

• The political crisis in Ethiopia is not showing signs of abating.
• Some reforms, such as government reimbursement of telehealth consultations, may be reversed when the crisis abates.

Question 3

Abdicate

Answer 3

given up on power, resign, stand down, surrender, renounce the throne

• Once one of the most respected agencies in Washington, the SEC and its younger cousin, the CFTC, have abdicated their role as economic policymakers by buying into the free-market fantasy that markets are rational and self-correcting.
• Juan Carlos is the second European monarch to abdicate in just over a year.

Question 4

Abjure

Answer 4

abandon, reject, renounce

• He’s been forced to abjure his most important achievement as governor, his healthcare plan.
• Mary treated her conspicuously as a sister; she refused, however, to abjure her Protestantism.

Question 5

Abject

Answer 5

extreme, utterly hopeless, miserable, humiliating, or wretched

• America’s abject failure to deal adequately with the biggest global health emergency in a century has prompted some experts to argue that the pandemic may serve as a geopolitical inflection point.
• Our main message is that whoever wins, it will not be enough for him to fix the US’s abject failures in handling the pandemic and to take climate change seriously.

Question 6

Abeyance

Answer 6

temporary inactivity, cessation, or suspension:

• Let’s hold that problem in abeyance for a while.
• It’s unclear when lenders will end the abeyance awarded all of those delinquent mortgages.
• My own direct correspondence with Mr. Baxter is now about three months in abeyance.

Question 7

Aberrant

Answer 7

deviating from the ordinary, usual, or normal type; exceptional; abnormal.

• These aberrant lines are much more common in the dramatic blank verse of the seventeenth century.
• Turmeric could have important abilities in healing and preventing brain damage—or this could be an aberrant finding.

Question 8

Abstemious

Answer 8

sparing or moderate in eating and drinking; temperate in diet. (संयमी)

• He quit smoking weed years ago, gave up drinking, and today lives a fairly abstemious life.
• Deviled eggs are a cocktail-party staple and are magnetic in their ability to attract even abstemious guests.

Question 9

Abscission

Answer 9

the act of cutting off; sudden termination, isolation, segregation, detachment

Question 10

Abstinence

Answer 10

giving up on certain pleasure, restrain, moderate (परहेज़)

• Worse, some schools preach abstinence only or offer little to no sexual education.
• We see detoxing as a path to transcendence, a symbol of modern urban virtue and self-transformation through abstinence.

Question 11

Abysmal

Answer 11

very bad, pathetic, useless, lousy, terrible, awful, poor, unsatisfactory, hopeless

• Let’s be clear, the United States is abysmal in its human rights practices.
• For everybody else, public schools were the only option—and these institutions often had an abysmal record.

Question 12

Accretion

Answer 12

an increase by natural growth or by gradual external addition; growth in size or extent.

• Nearly 35,000 customers in Virginia were without power because of ice accretion on power lines, mostly in Fauquier, Culpeper, Orange, Albemarle and Louisa counties.
• Experimental tools are available, which combine the depth of ice accretion on trees with wind speed data, to predict the level of utility disruption.

Question 13

Accrue

Answer 13

accompany, arise, result, accumulate, growth by additions, to happen or result as a natural growth, addition, etc.

• Any additional time off would come out of his accrued sick and vacation time, he was told.
• The order also does not prevent landlords from charging fees or accruing interest, if those are included under the renter’s lease.

Question 14

Adamant

Answer 14

uncompromising, unyielding, unshakeable, determined, inflexible (अटल)

• I was adamant about staying active as much as my body could endure.
• FDA regulators are adamant that a vaccine will not be approved until it is demonstrated to be safe and effective.

Question 15

Adjunct

Answer 15

helper, attached, joined, assistant, coherent, something added to another thing but not essential to it.

• Robert Bazell is an adjunct professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale.

Question 16

Admonish

Answer 16

advise, or counsel against something., to caution, damn, pshaw, reproach, warn

• He even remembered to thank the voters and admonish cellphone companies for fleecing his fans.

Question 17

Adulterate

Answer 17

to corrupt, make impure, defraud, sophisticate

• It is, of course, illegal to adulterate milk, yet it is sometimes done.

Question 18

Aesthetic

Answer 18

related to beauty and art, elegant

• This product comes in eight different colors to fit your own aesthetic, and it makes for a great functional decor item.

Question 19

Affected

Answer 19

acted upon; influenced, impressed, pretentious, insidious, deceptive, phony

• In affected regions, hundreds of millions of people could be threatened with dying heat.

Question 20

Affinity

Answer 20

a natural liking for or attraction to a person, thing, idea, etc.

• All those who place ads on Google are allowed to address their affinity audiences through Gmail, video, display, and search efforts.
• If affinity audiences are floating users whose attention towards your products may falter at times, custom affinity audiences are anchored to your company.

Question 21

Aggrandize

Answer 21

to widen in scope; increase in size or intensity; enlarge; extend.

• His ambition was not to secure for himself ease or luxury, but to extend his imperial power, and to aggrandize his family.
• The Master proceeded to show that a man who speaks on his own authority alone seeks to aggrandize himself.

Question 22

Alacrity

Answer 22

eagerness, willingness

• When it comes to nuns, though, the church is somehow able to act with alacrity.
• “Capital, capital,” his lordship would remark with great alacrity, when there was no other way of escape.

Question 23

Alchemy

Answer 23

convert metal to the gold

• Their work revealed the strange alchemy at work inside the nucleus of an atom.

Question 24

Allay

Answer 24

ease, to rest; calm; quiet.

• Museums have protocols in place to allay many of these fears, including delayed data release policies and temporary embargoes that allow researchers to finish projects before their data are made available to the public.
• Before long, those answers were able to allay the doubts and concerns of investors who maybe didn’t fully understand Canva’s business, but who recognized the opportunity that was beginning to emerge with design and publishing tools moving online.

Question 25

Alleviate

Answer 25

to make easier to endure; lessen; mitigate:

• None of these alleged fixes simultaneously alleviate the technology’s true physical and digital harms.
• I don’t have all the answers, but part of the solution no doubt is alleviating pressure for parents while finding at-home learning methods that are actually effective for kids.

Question 26

Allure

Answer 26

to fascinate; charm, entice (लुभाना)

• The technique is valuable for validating origin when terroir is part of a product’s allure.
• Still, the allure and convenience of a fully operational and resourced studio kitchen and staff is is probably undeniable.

Question 27

Amalgamate

Answer 27

mix, modulate, convert into a whole

• Another committee for the same purpose is also in formation, and the two committees will either amalgamate or work together.
• Another committee for the same purpose is also in formation, and the two committees will either amalgamate or work together.

Question 28

Ambiguous

Answer 28

unclear, doubtful

• Those metrics provide a very clear way to benchmark performance—something that doesn’t exist for many real-world problems, where the most effective move may be far more ambiguous and the entire concept of “winning” may not apply.
• The question was ambiguous as stated, so I gave credit for both answers.

Question 29

Ambivalence

Answer 29

state of having conflicting emotional attitudes, doubt

• The ambivalence is reflected in U.S. policy, which often has served to complicate aid delivery in conflict zones.
• All parties display ambivalence, all the characters lie to themselves, everyone has someone else they blame.

Question 30

Ambrosia

Answer 30

food of gods, delicious अमृत

• If Tilda Swinton ate anything for five years straight, it would probably be ambrosia.

Question 31

Ameliorate

Answer 31

to make or become better, more bearable, or more satisfactory; improve:

• Nicole Goodkind, politics writerI’ve read over and over that the only way to ameliorate jet lag is to get your body clock on the clock of where you are as quickly as possible.
• Using technology to ameliorate the burden of technology surrounding our new remote-working lives is a great example of a grafting on a solution after the fact.

Question 32

Amenable

Answer 32

ready or willing to answer, act, agree, or yield; open to influence, persuasion, or advice; agreeable; submissive; tractable:

• Collins, though, may be more amenable after her intensely competitive November election is over.
• I was pretty shocked in general to see how amenable people were to changing this very foundational thing!

Question 33

Amenity

Answer 33

The facility, something that increases comfort, सुख सुविधा

• These facilities and amenities are irrationally and inconsistently credited with more points than actual parkland.

Question 34

Amulet

Answer 34

an ornament is worn as a charm again evil spirits, ताबीज

• A girl who loves one man purely has about her an amulet which defies the advances of the profligate.

Question 35

Anachronism

Answer 35

something out of the proper time, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned.

• The usual policy of staying out of foreign conflicts unless absolutely necessary was becoming an anachronism.
• The “reenactment” of the battle, an even more recent anachronism, dates back only to 1977.

Question 36

Analgesic

Answer 36

medication that reduces pain

Question 37

Analogous

Answer 37

comparable, relevant, similar,

• This second step is analogous to docked dopamine “ships” changing how likely it is that a biological neuron will fire in the future.
• Sharon Hood, a Forest Service research ecologist in Montana, explains that flora have immune systems analogous to those of fauna, and in fire-adapted ecosystems, fire stimulates that immunity.

Question 38

Anarchy

Answer 38

absence of government, lawlessness, chaos

• Letting humans use their common sense is not an invitation to anarchy.
• I had the opportunity to appear on the popular Sons of Anarchy series in their final season.
• He’ll see the saboteur allowing chaos and anarchy to reign globally.