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Hit Parade Group 6
Cracking The GRE 2009
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| abjure | to renounce or reject solemnly; to recant; to avoid |
| adumbrate | to foreshadow vaguely or intimate; to suggest or outline sketchily; to obscure or overshadow |
| anathema | a solemn or ecclesiastical (religious) curse; accursed or thoroughly loathed person or thing |
| anodyne | soothing, something that assuages or allays pain or comforts |
| apogee | farthest or highest point; culmination; zenith |
| apostate | one who abandons long-held religious or political convictions |
| apotheosis | deification, glorification to godliness, an exalted example, a model of excellence or perfection |
| asperity | severity, rigor; roughness, harshness; acrimony, irritability |
| asseverate | to aver, allege, assert |
| assiduous | diligent, hard-working, sedulous |
| augury | omen, portent |
| bellicose | belligerent, pugnacious, warlike |
| calumniate | to slander, make a false accusation |
| captious | disposed to point out trivial faults, calculated to confuse or entrap in argument |
| cavil | to find fault without good reason |
| celerity | speed, alacrity; (think accelerate) |
| chimera | an illusion; originally, an imaginary fire-breathing she-monster |
| contumacious | insubordinate, rebellious |
| contumely | insult, scorn, aspersion |
| debacle | rout, fiasco, complete failure |
| denouement | an outcome or solution; the unraveling of a plot |
| descry | to discriminate or discern |
| desuetude | disuse |
| desultory | random; aimless; marked by a lack of plan or purpose |
| diaphanous | transparent, gauzy |
| diffident | reserved, shy, unassuming; lacking in self-confidence |
| dirge | a song of grief or lamentation |
| encomium | glowing and enthusiastic praise; panegyric, tribute, eulogy |
| eschew | to shun or avoid |
| excoriate | to censure scathingly, to upbraid |
| execrate | to denounce, feel loathing for, curse, declare to be evil |
| exegesis | critical examination, explication |
| expiate | to atone or make amends for |
| extirpate | to destroy, exterminate, cut out, exscind |
| fatuous | silly, inanely foolish |
| fractious | quarrelsome, rebellious, unruly, refractory, irritable |
| gainsay | to deny, dispute, contradict, oppose |
| heterodox | unorthodox, heretical, iconoclastic |
| imbroglio | difficult or embarrassing situation |
| indefatigable | not easily exhaustible; tireless, dogged |
| ineluctable | certain, inevitable |
| inimitable | one of a kind, peerless |
| insouciant | unconcerned, carefree, heedless |
| inveterate | deep rooted, ingrained, habitual |
| jejune | vapid, uninteresting, nugatory; childish, immature, puerile |
| lubricious | lewd, wanton, greasy, slippery |
| mendicant | a beggar, supplicant |
| meretricious | cheap, gaudy, tawdry, flashy, showy; attracting by false show |
| minatory | menacing, threatening (reminds you of the Minotaur, a threatening creature indeed) |
| nadir | low point, perigee |
| nonplussed | baffled, bewildered, at a loss for what to do or think |
| obstreperous | noisily and stubbornly defiant, aggressively boisterous |
| ossified | tending to become more rigid, conventional, sterile, and reactionary with age; literally, turned into bone |
| palliate | to make something seem less serious, to gloss over, to make less severe or intense |
| panegyric | formal praise, eulogy, encomium |
| parsimonious | cheap, miserly |
| pellucid | transparent, easy to understand, limpid |
| peroration | the concluding part of a speech; flowery, rhetorical speech |
| plangent | pounding, thundering, resounding |
| prolix | long-winded, verbose |
| propitiate | to appease; to conciliate |
| propitious | auspicious, favorable |
| puerile | childish, immature, jejune, nugatory |
| puissance | power, strength |
| puissant | powerful, strong |
| pusillanimous | cowardly, craven |
| remonstrate | to protest, object |
| sagacious | having sound judgment; perceptive, wise; like a sage |
| salacious | lustful, lascivious, bawdy |
| salutary | remedial, wholesome, causing improvement |
| sanguine | cheerful, confident, optimistic |
| saturnine | gloomy, dark, sullen, morose |
| sententious | aphoristic or moralistic; epigrammatic; tending to moralize excessively |
| stentorian | extremely loud and powerful |
| stygian | gloomy, dark |
| sycophant | toady, servile, self-seeking, flatterer; parasitic |
| tendentious | biased; showing marked tendencies |
| timorous | timid, fearful, diffident |
| tyro | novice, greenhorn, rank amateur |
| vitiate | to corrupt, debase, spoil, make ineffective |
| voluble | fluent, verbal, having easy use of spoken language |