Three sisters

Question 1

cultivate

Answer 1

(v.) to nurture, improve, refine (At the library, she cultivated her interest in spy novels.)

Question 2

allocate

Answer 2

(v.) to distribute, set aside (The Mayor allocated 30 percent of the funds for improving the town’s schools.)

Question 3

contentious

Answer 3

(adj.) having a tendency to quarrel or dispute (George’s contentious personality made him unpopular with his classmates.)

Question 4

denigrate

Answer 4

(v.) to belittle, diminish the opinion of (The company decided that its advertisements would no longer denigrate the company’s competitors.)

Question 5

enamor

Answer 5

(v.) to fill with love, fascinate, usually used in passive form followed by “of” or “with” (I grew enamored of that boy when he quoted my favorite love poem.)

Question 6

haughty

Answer 6

(adj.) disdainfully proud (The superstar’s haughty dismissal of her costars will backfire on her someday.)

Question 7

promulgate

Answer 7

(v.) to proclaim, make known (The film professor promulgated that both in terms of sex appeal and political intrigue, Sean Connery’s James Bond was superior to Roger Moore’s.)

Question 8

divulge

Answer 8

(v.) to reveal something secret (Pressured by the press, the government finally divulged the previously unknown information.)

Question 9

rail

Answer 9

(v.) to scold, protest (The professor railed against the injustice of the college’s tenure policy.)

Question 10

illicit

Answer 10

(adj.) forbidden, not permitted (The fourth-grader learned many illicit words from a pamphlet that was being passed around school.)

Question 11

resilient

Answer 11

(adj.) able to recover from misfortune; able to withstand adversity (The resilient ballplayer quickly recovered from his wrist injury.)

Question 12

torrid

Answer 12

(adj.) giving off intense heat, passionate (I didn’t want to witness the neighbor’s torrid affair through the window.)

Question 13

egregious

Answer 13

(adj.) extremely bad (The student who threw sloppy joes across the cafeteria was punished for his egregious behavior.)

Question 14

incendiary

Answer 14

1. (n.) a person who agitates (If we catch the incendiary who screamed “bomb” in the middle of the soccer match, we’re going to put him in jail.) 2. (adj.) inflammatory, causing combustion (Gas and lighter fluid are incendiary materials that should be kept out of hot storage areas.)

Question 15

fractious

Answer 15

(adj.) troublesome or irritable (Although the child insisted he wasn’t tired, his fractious behavior— especially his decision to crush his cheese and crackers all over the floor—convinced everyone present that it was time to put him to bed.)

Question 16

exacerbate

Answer 16

(v.) to make more violent, intense (The gruesome and scary movie I saw last night exacerbated my fears of the dark.)

Question 17

insidious

Answer 17

adj.) appealing but imperceptibly harmful, seductive (Lisa’s insidious chocolate cake tastes so good but makes you feel so sick later on!)

Question 18

inexorable

Answer 18

(adj.) incapable of being persuaded or placated (Although I begged for hours, Mom was inexorable and refused to let me stay out all night after the prom.)

Question 19

puerile

Answer 19

(adj.) juvenile, immature (The judge demanded order after the lawyer’s puerile attempt to object by stomping his feet on the courtroom floor.)

Question 20

nebulous

Answer 20

(adj.) vaguely defined, cloudy (The transition between governments meant that who was actually in charge was a nebulous matter.)