Vocabulary building

Vocabulary Building
ABHOR
To despise.
The eccentric emperor abhorred the color green so much that he outlawed the wearing of green clothes.

ACRID
Harsh, bitter.
The acrid taste of the aspirin tablet made Sally gag.

AGGREGATE
Total.
The aggregate weight of the Dallas Cowboys' starting five offensive linemen is more than a ton.

ALTERCATION
A quarrel.
An altercation with another fan almost led to a full-scale brawl.

AMEND
To fix.
The boys amended the "No New Members Allowed" codicil of their secret club in order to grant Reynolds access to the treehouse.

ANGULAR
Characterized by sharp angles; lean and gaunt.
The angular style of the Romanesque church contrasted with the smooth curves of the Gothic cathedral.

ANTIPATHY
Hatred, hostility; extreme opposition or aversion.
The Freedonians' open antipathy towards their neighbors to the south, the Barnidians, has been the cause of several major wars between the two peoples.

ARABLE
Suitable for cultivation.
Not far from the Arabian desert lies the arable soil of the Fertile Crescent.

ARCHETYPE
Prototype; a perfect example.
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the first novel ever written, remains the archetype for an epistolary work of fiction.

ASCETIC
Depriving oneself of luxury; austere; one who lives in this manner.
The monk lived an ascetic lifestyle, sleeping on a mat on the floor.

ASSUAGE
To ease or lessen
The doctor prescribed pain relievers to assuage the patient's migraines.

AUDACIOUS
Bold and daring
George Sand's contemporaries were scandalized by her unconventional and audacious lifestyle.

AUSPICIOUS
Happening at an advantageous time; promising.
Beethoven auspiciously arrived in Vienna the same year Mozart died.

AVIARY
A large enclosure housing birds.
A very rich bird lived in a big aviary.

BEGUILE
To trick; to mislead.
The flier beguiled me into believing I had won a million dollars, when , of course, I had not.

BLANDISH
To coax with flattery.
By constantly telling her she was the most beautiful woman in the world, Paris was able to blandish Helen into going to the movies.

BIAS
A prejudice; a slant.
The officials were biased against my team.

BIBLIOPHILE
One who loves books.
The philanthropist, a noted bibliophile, has over one million titles in his personal library.

BRASH
Having no regard for consequences; tactless.
The soldier was court-martialed for his brash decision to attack the village without permission from Mission Control.

BUSTLING
Brimming with activity.
The bustling city gets even busier during the holidays.

CARNIVOROUS
Meat-eating.
The carnivorous lion happily munched on the felled zebra.

CASTIGATE
To condemn.
The fiery preacher Cotton Mather castigated the Salem women, calling them witches.

CENSURE
To find fault with and condemn as wrong; blame.
The corporation was censured for its careless disposal of toxic waste.

CIRCUMSPECT
Cautious, wary.
Ever since she was cheated out of money last year, Jessica has been circumspect in her dealings with the bank.

CLAIRVOYANT
Having ESP; psychic.
In 1542, the clairvoyant Nostradamus predicted the day that Elvis would die.

COMPOSURE
Level-headedness; poise.
Even when his friends began to panic, Dennis kept his composure.

CONCESSION
A sacrifice; an admittance; something yielded.
My grandmother shuns modern conveniences: dishwashers, microwaves, coffee makers; her one concession to the technological age is her widescreen TV.

COVERT
Hidden, secret.
The covert marriage between the two movie stars was not made public until years later.

CURT
Blunt; abrupt.
Sally was put off by the curt reception she received at the party.

DANK
Unpleasantly humid.
American troops were ill at ease in the dank jungles of Vietnam.

DAUNTED
Intimidated.
Daunted by the hustle and bustle of New York, Roberto moved back to Kansas.

DEFICIT
A lack of something, a gap.
The farm compensated for its deficit in corn by selling more wheat.

DELUGE
A flood.
A deluge of Irish immigrants arrived on Ellis Island during the Potato Famine of 1846.

DEPRECATE
To disparage, to belittle.
The comedian makes fun of himself all the time, and audiences applaud this self-deprecating humor.

DESCENDANT
One who is directly related to someone of an older generation.
49ers quarterback Steve Young is a direct descendant of Brigham Young.

DESPOT
An absolute monarch, a tyrant.
The nefarious despot Xerxes executed all those who disagreed with him.

DIATRIBE
Bitter verbal attack.
The politician pulled no punches in his diatribe against the rival candidate.

DIABOLICAL
Fiendish, wicked.
She's a criminal with a diabolical mind.

DIFFIDENT
Shy, lacking confidence.
The outgoing students worked the room, trying to meet as many people as possible, while the more diffident ones did not stray from their tables.

DISSECT
To break into pieces; to analyze.
When we dissect Joyce's Ulysses, we find that it is modeled on Homer's The Odyssey.

DISSENSION
Disagreement, difference of opinion.
The President's proposal to raise taxes met with dissension in the Senate.

DOGMA
Belief system.
The zealot preached the dogma of his political party.

DOGMATIC
Dictatorial in one's opinions
The mayor was dogmatic - refusing to listen to his councilors, insisting only he was right.

DORMANT
At rest, inactive, in suspended animation.
The volcano, which had lay dormant for over a century, suddenly erupted, showering the countryside with volcanic ash.

EFFUSIVE
Full of emotion.
Beethoven's effusive piano sonatas sound like outcries of human emotion.

ENIGMA
A mystery.
Shodie was an enigma; everyone knew her name, but nobody knew who she was or where she had come from.

ENSHROUD
To cover, enclose with a dark cover.
The garden, which months before had been so luxuriant, was now enshrouded in snow.

EPHEMERAL
Momentary, transient, fleeting.
Fame, while ephemeral, begets wealth.

EQUIVOCATE
To intentionally use vague or ambiguous language.
When asked a direct question, the used-car salesmen equivocated, praising the automobile's "intangibles."

EULOGY
Speech delivered at a funeral to honor the dead.
In the eulogy for Mickey Mantle, Bob Costas spoke about what the ballplayer meant to a generation of fans.

EVANESCENT
Momentary, short-lived, fleeting.
The seven chocolate bars gave Keith an evanescent sugar rush which soon gave way to fatigue.

EXCOMMUNICATE
To formally bar membership from the Church.
The Pope excommunicated Henry VIII on the grounds of heresy.

EXTEMPORIZE
Improvise.
The Academy Award winner, having lost the hard copy of his speech, had to extemporize his acceptance speech.

EUPHONY
Pleasant, harmonious sound.
He felt that Spanish and Italian were euphonious languages, and set out to learn them both.

FALLACIOUS
Wrong, unsound, illogical.
His fallacious interpretation of the novel has no basis in fact.

FARCICAL
Absurd.
The tabloids bought his farcical theory that aliens have kidnapped Elvis's brain.

FEARSOME
Inspiring fear; timid.
Standing eight feet tall with one enormous eye, the Cyclops was fearsome to behold.

FLAUNT
To show off.
The weightlifter flaunted his muscular body by wearing sleeveless T shirts.

FOUNDERING
Falling helplessly; sinking.
Foundering through two feet of snow, the high school students arrived, bitter that they did not get a snow day.

FRUGAL
Economical.
The frugal man was careful with his money, never buying anything on impulse.

GARRULOUS
Very talkative.
Everyone in the building dreaded running into garrulous Mr. Smed, because he could chatter on about trivial matters for hours.

HAPLESS
Having bad luck, unfortunate.
Two days after accidentally shooting himself during a performance, the hapless opera singer fell off the stage and broke both legs.

HIBERNATION
A seasonal period of sleep.
During hibernation, bears routinely lose a hundred pounds of body weight.

HYPERBOLIC
Purposefully exaggerated language.
"I could sleep for a year,: and "this book weighs a ton" are hyperbolic statements.

IMPALPABLE
Unable to be touched.
The election of JFK generated an impalpable sense of national unity that had not been felt since FDR.

INEPT
Clumsy, awkward; foolish, nonsensical.
He was so inept in the garden that he dug up roses and fertilized weeds.

INGRATIATE
To work oneself into the favor of someone.
The college graduate worked 120 hour weeks in order to ingratiate himself with his employers.

INTEGRAL
Central, indispensable.
The piston is an integral part of a car's engine.

ITINERANT
Having a tendency to travel.
The Bushmen are an itinerant people, moving seasonally from place to place.

KEEN
Having a sharp edge; intellectually sharp.
Bret's keen interest in literature inspired him to become a writer.

KINDLE
To ignite; to inspire.
The Revolutionary War kindled a nationalistic fervor in America.

LATENT
Inherent in but hidden, potential.
Her latent gift for poetry did not begin to show itself until her thirtieth birthday.

LOQUACIOUS
Talkative.
Loquacious talkers are loath to keep quiet.

LUXURIANT
Elegant, lavish.
Fruit from the luxuriant greenery on the island could have fed Gilligan a hundred times over.

MEANDER
To wander aimlessly.
The Mendere is a river in Asia Minor noted in ancient times for its meandering course.

MERCURIAL
Quick, shrewd and unpredictable.
Mercury in Roman mythology was not only the speedy messenger to the gods - he was also the god of commerce, travel, cleverness and thievery.
A mercurial person has the qualities of the god--shrewd and clever, and the metal--volatile and changeable.

MISANTHROPE
One who hates or distrusts mankind.
The misanthrope won't let anyone read his writing for fear that they may steal his ideas.

MOLT
To shed hair, skin or an outer layer periodically.
The bird molts every spring, shedding its old feathers.

MUNDANE
Trite; commonplace.
Beth was assigned the mundane task of entering the data into the computer.

MUNIFICENT
Generous.
The munificent man gave a magnificent gift.

MORIBUND
Dying,decaying.
Thanks to feminism, many sexist customs are moribund in this society.

MYRIAD
Immense number, multitude.
Myriad changes in the laws regulating the Internet have made maintenance of a Web site considerably more expensive.

NADIR
Lowest point.
Opposite of "zenith." The Dark Ages were the nadir of human development.

NEGLIGENCE
Carelessness.
Although the brothers had killed their father, the jury acquitted them, ruling that the deceased had been negligent in his care of them.

NONCOMMITTAL
Not committing to any one side.
The President remained noncommittal on the issue of the poll tax, refusing to say where he stood.

NULLIFY
To make legally invalid; to counteract the effect of.
His perfect SATs nullified his subpar performance on the achievement tests.

OBSCURE
Dark; mysterious; little-known.
The radio station played obscure artists instead of commercial ones.

OBSOLETE
Out of date, no longer necessary.
Although manual typewriters are obsolete, many writers prefer them to word processors.

OBTUSE
Stupid; blunt.
President Warren Harding's obtuse domestic policies led to the Teapot Dome scandal.

OSTENSIBLE
Apparent.
While the issue of slavery was the ostensible cause of the Civil War, many other factors contributed to the conflict.

What Is PAGET'S DISEASE?
(medical vocabulary) Paget's Disease is characterized by enlargement, deformity, and increased vascularity of the bones that is most often seen in older adults. It's a metabolic disorder of bone turnover in which increased bone resorption results in weakness.

PALLID
Lacking color or liveliness.
The week in the Bahamas has done him some good; his usually pallid cheeks are now bronze.

PARADIGM
A model.
The United States government is a paradigm of a working republic.

PATHOGENIC
Causing disease.
The terrorists threatening to infect the city's water supply with pathogenic chemicals were apprehended by the Caped Crusader.

PATRIARCHAL
Dominated and controlled by men.
The patriarchal literary canon reflects ancient society's subjugation of women.

PENURY
Extreme poverty.
The magazine's photographs of starving children called the world's attention to the penury in Ethiopia during the drought.

PERFIDIOUS
Faithless, disloyal, untrustworthy.
The misanthrope considered humans perfidious, but he loved his faithful dog.

PINNACLE
Highest point, peak.
At the pinnacle of his power, Alexander the Great ruled the entire known world.

PITHY
Profound, substantial; concise, succinct, to the point.
Shakespeare's plays are loaded with pithy lines like, "What's past is prologue," and, "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

PLACATE
To soothe or pacify.
Nancy placated the sobbing baby by giving him a pacifier.

PRAGMATIC
Practical, choosing the facts over ideals.
Although he did not agree with their politics, the pragmatic Senator accepted their campaign contribution.

PRECIPITATE
To throw down from a height; to cause to happen.
The rumor that the rock star would be at the mall precipitated thousands of fans to gather outside.

PRESUMPTUOUS
Rude; improperly bold.
It was presumptuous of Lazlo to ask the teacher personal questions during class.

PROLOGUE
Introduction of a literary work.
The prologue to Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is a treatise on the purpose of art.

RANCID
Spoiled, rotten.
The rancid odor of garbage made me sick to my stomach.

RAPT
Deeply absorbed.
Rodin's most famous sculpture is of a man rapt in thought.

REFUTE
To contradict, discredit.
Many scholars refute the claim that Francis Bacon wrote all of Shakespeare's plays.

RESULTANT
Resulting from something else.
The low temperatures - and the resultant energy shortage - shut down the city of Washington for a full week.

RURAL
Relating to the country.
Samuel Johnson hated the country, but Thoreau loved rural settings.

SARDONIC
Cynical, scornfully mocking.
"I love school," the class cut-up said sardonically, "and math class is my favorite."

SEMINAL
Relating to the beginning or seeds of something.
Seminal filmmaker D.W. Griffith pioneered many of the cinematic techniques used today.

SEQUESTER
To isolate.
The jurors were sequestered in a hotel until after the trial.

SERENADE
To sing romantically for someone.
Perched on her balcony, Juliet listened to Romeo serenade her.

SIMIAN
Ape-like; relating to apes.
Simian characteristics of Neanderthal skulls suggest that Homo Sapiens descend from apes.

SOPHOMORIC
Immature and overconfident.
The teenage novelist sent a sophomoric cover letter with his manuscript which described his book as "The Great American Novel."

SPRIGHTLY
Lively, animated, energetic.
He was quite sprightly and active for a 98 year-old.

SUPERCILIOUS
Arrogant, haughty, overbearing, condescending.
She was a shallow and scornful society woman with a supercilious manner.

SUBTERRANEAN
Underground.
Gnomes are subterranean creatures who make their homes deep underground.

SUPERFLUOUS
More than necessary; extra.
Brady had surgery to remove his superfluous third toe.

TACITURN
Not vocal.
In the face of adversity, the normally outspoken journalist became taciturn.

TALON
Claw of an animal, esp. a bird of prey.
A vulture holds its prey in its talons while it dismembers the small animal with its beak.

TEMPESTUOUS
Stormy, raging, furious.
After a year of making tabloid headlines, the celebrity couple ended their tempestuous relationship.

TOPOGRAPHY
Art of making maps or charts.
A master of topography, George is blessed with a keen sense of direction.

TRAVESTY
Parody, exaggerated imitation, caricature.
Emilio's red-and-gold checkered tuxedo was a travesty of good taste.

TROUNCE
To beat severely, to defeat.
The Shawnee Indians trounced General Custer's troops in one of the worst losses in U.S. military history.

TRUCE
A peace agreement.
After fighting for fifty years, the two nations called a truce.

UPBRAID
To scold sharply.
She upbraided her son for stealing cookies from the cookie jar.

VACILLATE
To waver.
The President continues to vacillate on the issue of the poll tax.

VALIDATE
To authorize, to certify, to confirm.
Dr. Spacedog Mody, an expert in Roman artifacts, was able to validate the signature of Julius Caesar as authentic.

VERBOSE
Wordy.
I prefer Hemingway's concise, economical prose to Faulkner's verbose style.

VISUAL PERCEPTION refers to how people organize and integrate visual patterns.
For example, an ability to see the pattern of letters on a page, all facing the same direction, is part of visual perception. A child who reads haltingly or transposes, reverses, or leaves out letters may have a visual perceptual weakness.

VIVACIOUS
Lively, spirited.
She was vivacious and outgoing, always ready to try something new.

WAYWARD
Erratic, unrestrained, reckless.
The wayward students at Huck Finn High School refused to yield to authority; on several occasions, they locked the principal in the basement and took the day off from school.

INFERENCE vs. ASSUMPTION
What's the Difference? Make sure you don't confuse the terms "inference" and "assumption."
An inference is something that the test taker (you) can take as almost certainly true, based on what the author has written.
An assumption is something that the author must have assumed as true in order for his/her argument to be possible.

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