SAT 15 Flashcards
Adulation; noun
– extreme flattery or admiration; worship; praise / disparagement
The rock star thrived on the adulation of his groupies and yes men.
Brevity; noun
– briefness; shortness / lengthiness
Brevity is essential when you text message from your cell phone.
Disparity; noun
– difference; inequality; discrepancy / equality
Their disparity in rank made no difference at all to the prince and Cinderella.
Esoteric; adj.
– hard to understand; obscure
The esoteric writing was hard to understand, and was only read by a few.
Frugality; noun
- penny-pinching; stinginess; thriftiness / generosity
Anyone who doesn’t learn to practice frugality risks bankruptcy
Heresy; noun
– belief that is opposed by the establishment; sacrilege
Galileo was tried for heresy because his assertion that the earth moved around the sun contradicted religious teachings.
Illusory; adj.
– deceptive; false; illusive / real
Illusory profits caused the rise and fall of Enron.
Inane; adj.
– silly; absurd; ridiculous / sensible
Jim records the most inane greetings on his answer machine.
Innate; adj.
– inherent; inborn
Mozart’s parents soon recognized young Wolfgang’s innate talent for music.
Orator; noun
– public speaker; lecturer; spokesperson
The abolitionist Frederick Douglass was a brilliant orator whose speecheshighlighted the evils of slavery.
Renounce; verb
– abandon; disown; repudiate / accept
The candidate renounced his candidacy, but his name was still on the ballot.
Reprehensible; adj.
– deserving of reproof, rebuke, or censure
Abigail’s manners were reprehensible; she should know better than to eat with her hands.
Rhetorical; adj.
– pertaining to effective communication; insincere in language / literal
To win the audience, the speaker used every rhetorical trick in the book.
Seclusion; noun
– isolation; solitude
One moment she loved crowds; the next, she sought seclusion.
verb – to isolate
She was secluded to the point that no one visited her.
Servile; adj.
– slavishly submissive or obsequious; cringing; fawning
Dave’s attention to Mary was servile; he was at her beck and call all hours of the day.
Sporadic; adj.
– now and then; few and far between; stopping and starting / regular
The gunfire was sporadic, starting and stopping all through the night.
Trite; adj.
– stale; humdrum; banal; unoriginal; overused / original
The critic from the LA Times panned the new play because of its trite plot.
Unwarranted; adj.
– having no basis or foundation in fact; groundless
Such strong criticism of the fire chief was completely unwarranted as he had been on vacation when the fires took place.
Vigor; noun
– energy; vitality; enthusiasm; strength / lethargy
Sherman presented his ideas with great deal of vigor.
Volatile; adj.
– evaporating quickly; unstable; vaporizing; eruptive / placid
The situation in the Middle East is volatile and may erupt into a civil war.
