psat_vocabulary_20151002144817

Question 1

Alleviate

Answer 1

-Make less severe*He put on his sunglasses, which did little to alleviate the headache sunlight gave him.

Question 2

Cacophony

Answer 2

-Discordant loud noises*She raised the amulet to stare at it, the cacophony around her rising as the excited inmates glimpsed their freedom.

Question 3

Denounce

Answer 3

-Condemn; speak out against*It was tempting to denounce him in front of everyone, but that would be childish.

Question 4

Exasperated

Answer 4

-frustrated; annoyed*When your child has been having a tantrum for an hour, this is an example of a situation where you would feel exasperated.

Question 5

Ignominy

Answer 5

-Shame [ignominious (a) = shameful]*An example of ignominy is the state of a person being displayed in public stocks.

Question 6

Lithe

Answer 6

-Flexible; supple*He turned and mounted his horse in one lithe movement.

Question 7

Omniscient

Answer 7

-all-knowing*The Parsis adore fire as the visible expression of Ahura-Mazda, the eternal principle of light and righteousness; the Brahmans worship it as divine and omniscient.’

Question 8

Pragmatist

Answer 8

-practical person; one who is concerned with usefulness*The pragmatist in me realizes I don’t need a core i7 to edit text files and run unicorn_rails in the background.

Question 9

Saccharin

Answer 9

• Falsely sweet*This includes a very large number of bodies chemically allied to benzol, such as carbolic acid, sulphocarbolates, creosote, wood tar, coal tar, oil of cade, thymol, salicylic acid, benzoic acid, naphthol, hydroquinon, cresol, guaiacol, ichthyol, saccharin and many others.

Question 10

Transient

Answer 10

-Short-lived; ephemeral*There is a transient population of thousands of visitors during the year.

Question 11

Aloof

Answer 11

-Distant; detached; cold*There is certain aloofness to most cranks that oozes out of their writing.

Question 12

Cajole

Answer 12

-coax*I’ll have to see if I can cajole some people into it.

Question 13

Deplete

Answer 13

-used up; lessen*While they are at it, environmentalists should push hard to develop crops that don’t deplete soil as much or that taste good raw.

Question 14

Exceptionable

Answer 14

-Very bad (something which we should object to)*But if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which, though not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying him.

Question 15

Illuminate

Answer 15

-To light up or make clear*She opened the single wardrobe, pushing the doors open enough for light to illuminate the contents.

Question 16

Livid

Answer 16

-Very angry*If I were a Facebook shareholder, I would be livid right now.

Question 17

Onerous

Answer 17

-Burdensome; hard to undertake*Its terms were the most onerous as yet imposed on the Ottoman sultans.

Question 18

Preamble

Answer 18

-Introductory material*Then, out of character and without preamble, he announced, I’ve got one more nail to put a flat in Mr. Fitzgerald’s little red wagon.

Question 19

Sacrosanct

Answer 19

-Very holy; inviolable*Not all history is sacrosanct.

Question 20

Traverse

Answer 20

-To move across*Giving him a few minutes to traverse the drive, she got up and went into the kitchen.