GRE Power Vocab - S Flashcards
Sagacious
adj. having sound judgment, perceptive, wise
Sagacious means like a sage, who is a person recognized as having great wisdom. Safe can also be an adjective, meaning wise
Salacious
adj. appealing to or causing sexual desire, bawdy
Salient
adj. prominent, protruding, conspicuous, highly relevant
Salubrious
adj. promoting health or well-being
Salutary
adj. remedial, whoelsome, causing improvement
Sanctimony
n. self-righteousness, pretended piety
Sanctimonious means hypocritcally pretending to be pious or being excessively pious
Sanction
n. authoritative permission or approval; a penalty intended to enforce compliance
this one can be confusing, since it has two, nearly opposite, meanings: approval and penalty
Sanction can also be used as a verb. Up until the last few decades it only meant to encourage or approve, but it has recently come to mean to punish as well
Sanguine
adj. cheerful, confident, optimistic
Sap
v. to enervate or weaken the vitality of
as a noun used informally, a spa is a gullible person, a fool
A sap can also be a blackjack (a short, leather-covered club) or to hit someonbody with such a weapon
Sartorial
adj. of or pertaining to clothing or style
Satiate
v. to overindulge, satisfy to excess
Sate is a synonym of satiate
Satire
n. a literary work that ridicules or criticizes human vice through humor or derision
Saturnine
adj. gloomy, dark, sullen, morose
Saturnine is similar in defintion to melancholy. Like mercurial, it draws its name from its name from astrology and the gods associated with certain planets
Scintillating
adj. animated, witty, brilliantly clever
Scurvy
adj. contemptible, despicable
Scurvy is a vitamin C deficiency that was familiar part of a sailor’s life before refrigeration
Sedulous
adj. diligent persistnet, hardworking
Seine
n. a large net hung out and dragged in to catch fish
Seine also means to fish using a seine, and the Seine is a river in the middle of Paris in which people might seine or something like that
Sere
adj. withered, arid
Seminal
adj. like a seed, constituting a source, originative
Serendipitous
adj. come upon or dound by accident; fortuitous
Shard
n. a piece of broken pottery or glass, any small piece or part
Simper
v. to smirk; to say something with a silly, coy smile
as a noun, simper is the silly smile itself
Sinecure
n. position requiring little or no work and usually providing an income
this word was first applied to priests without churches (or without parish duties of curing souls), who were said to have beneficium sine cura
Singular
adj. exceptional, unusual, odd
Sinuous
adj. winding, curving, moving lithely, devious
Slake
v. to satisfy, quench, lessen the intensity of
Sodden
adj soaked or drenched, unimaginative, dull
Solder
v. to weld, fuse or join, as with a soldering gun
Solicitous
adj. concerned and attentive, eager
Solvent
adj. able to meet finanical obligations; able to dissolve other substances
n. the liquid in which a solute is dissolved to form a solution
Sophistry
n. fallacious reasoning; plausible but faulty logic
Greek root soph gave rise to many English words about knowledge (either love of it, possession of it, or the lack of it). Philosophy is a love or pursuit of knowledge, and someone with great knowledge of the world might be called sophisticated
Sophistry is somewhat opposite as is sophomoric
Sophomoric
adj. exhibiting immaturity, lack of judgment, pretentious
Sophomoric literally means of or pertaining to a sophomore
Soporific
adj. causing drowsiness, tending to induce sleep
Soporific can also be used as a noun
Sordid
adj. characterized by filth, grime, or squalor, foul
Sparse
adj. thin, not dense, arranged at widely spaced intervals
Specious
adj. seeming true, but actually false, misleadingly attractive
Spendthrift
n. one who spends money wastefully
spendthrift can also be an adjective
Splenetic
adj. bad-tempered, irritable
Splenetic also means relating to the spleen, which was the seat of ill temper in classical knowledge
Sporadic
adj. occurring only occasionally, or in scattered instances
Spurious
adj. lacking authenticity or validity, false, counterfeit
Squalid
adj. Sordid, wretched and dirty as from neglect
Squalor is a wretched or filthy condition
Squander
v. to waste by spending or using irresponsibly
Stanch
v. to stop the flow of a fluid
don’t confuse with staunch, an adj., meaning firmly commited. sometimes stanch and staunch are spelt the same but can guess meaning based on context
Static
adj. not moving, active, or in motion; at rest
Steep
v. to saturate or completely soak
Stentorian
adj. extremely loud and powerful
Stint
v. to restrain, be sparing or frugal
stinting, and its opposite, unstinting are the adjectives that mean restraining and bestowed liberally, respectively
stint as a noun means a length of time spent in a specific way, as in a stint inthe military, in the White House, or as a roadie
Stoic
adj. indifferent to or unaffected by pleasure or pain, steadfast
Stoicism is the noun
Stolid
adj. calm, impassive
if you associate this word solid, stolid people show litle animation or emotion
Striated
adj. striped, grooved, or banded
Striations are the bands themselves
Strut
n. a structural support used to brace a framework
Strut can also be used as a verb to mean baffle or amaze
Stymie
v. to block, thwart
Subpoena
n. a court order requiring appearance and/or testimony
Subpoena can also be used as a verb
Subtle
adj. not obvious, elusive, difficult to discern, crafty or sly
Succinct
adj. brief, concise
Succor
n. assistance, relief in time of distress
Sundry
adj. various, miscellaneous, separate
If you’ve heard the phrase torn asunder, you are familiar with the etymology of this word. Sundry originally meant separate or distinct, but now also means various
Supercilious
adj. disdainful, arrogant, haught, characterized by haughty scorn
Superfluous
adj. exceeding what is sufficient or necessary
Supine
adj. inactive, lying on one’s back, apathetic, mentally or morally slack
Supine means lying face up and prone means lying face down
Supplant
v. to take the place of supersede
Suppliant
adj. asking humbly, beseeching
as a noun, a suppliant is same thing as a supplicant
Supplicant
n. beggar, who prays or begs for something
a supplicant is supplicating when he or she begs for something. Supplication is related to application, or the act of bringing yourself close to something. In supplication, though, there is the element of folding the leds under, or kneeling, that gives the sup- prefix
Surfeit
v. to feed or supply in excess
surfeit is also a noun, meaning excess, overindulgence
Sycophant
n. someone who tries to flatter or please for personal gain, parasite
Synthesis
n. the combination of parts to make a whole
