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Beyond Hit Parade -2
GRE Beyond Hit Parade - 2
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| abjure | (v) to renounce or reject solemnly; to recant; to avoid |
| adumbrate | (v) to foreshadow vaguely or intimate; to suggest or outline sketchily; to obscure or overshadow |
| anathema | (n) a solemn or ecclesiastical (religious) curse; accursed or thoroughly loathed person or thing |
| anodyne | (adj/n) soothing, something that assuages or allays pain or comforts |
| apogee | (n) farthest or highest point; culmination; zenith |
| apostate | (n) one who abandons long held religious or political convictions |
| apotheosis | (n) deification, glorification to godliness, an exhalted example, a model of excellence or perfection |
| asperity | (n) severity, rigor, roughness, harshness, acrimony, irritability |
| asseverate | (v) to aver, allege, assert |
| assiduous | (adj) diligent, hardworking |
| augury | (n) omen, portent |
| bellicose | (adj) belligerent, pugnacious, warlike |
| calumniate | (v) to slander, make a false accusation |
| captious | (adj) disposed to point out trivial faults; calculated to confuse or entrap in argument |
| cavil | (v) to find fault without good reason |
| celerity | (n) speed, alacrity (think accelerate) |
| chimera | (n) an illusion; originally a fire-breathing she-monster |
| contumacious | (adj) insubordinate, rebellious |
| debacle | (n) rout, fiasco, complete failure |
| denouement | (n) an outcome or solution; the unraveling of a plot |
| descry | (v) to discriminate or discern |
| desuetude | (n) disuse |
| desultory | (adj) random; aimless; marked by a lack of plan or purpose |
| diaphanous | (adj) transparent, gauzy |
| diffident | (adj) (adj) reserved, shy, unassuming; lacking in self-confidence |
| dirge | (n) a song of grief or lamentation |
| encomium | (n) glowing and enthusiastic praise; panegyric, tribute, eulogy |
| eschew | (v) to shun or avoid |
| excoriate | (v) to censure scathingly, to upbraid |
| execrate | (v) denounce, feel loathing for, curse, declare to be evil |
| exegesis | (n) critical examination, explication |
| expiate | (v) to atone or make amends for |
| extirpate | (v) to destroy, exterminate, cut out, exscind |
| fatuous | (adj) silly, inanely foolish |
| fractious | (adj) quarrelsome, rebellious, unruly, refractory, irritable |
| gainsay | (v) to deny, dispute, contradict, oppose |
| heterodox | (adj) unorthodox, heretical, iconoclastic |
| imbroglio | (n) difficult or embarrassing situation |
| indefatigable | (adj) not easily exhaustible; tireless; dogged |
| ineluctable | (adj) certain; inevitable |
| inimitable | (adj) one of a kind; peerless |
| insouciant | (adj) unconcerned, carefree, heedless |
| inveterate | (adj) deep rooted, ingrained, habitual |
| jejune | (adj) vapid, uninteresting, nugatory, childish, immature, puerile |
| lubricious | (adj) lewd, wanton, greasy, slippery |
| mendicant | (n) a beggar, supplicant |
| meretricious | (adj) cheap, gaudy, tawdry, flashy, showy; attracting by false show |
| minatory | (adj) menacing, threatening |
| nadir | (n) low point, perigee |
| nonplussed | (adj) baffled, bewildered, at a loss for what to do or think |
| obstreperous | (adj) noisily and stubbornly defiant, aggressively boisterous |
| ossified | (adj) tending to become more rigid, conventional, sterile, and reactionary with age; literally, turned into bone |
| palliate | (v) to make something seem less serious, to gloss over, to make less severe or intense |
| panegyric | (n) formal praise, eulogy, encomium |
| parsimonious | (adj) cheap, miserly |
| pellucid | (adj) transparent, easy to understand, limpid |
| peroration | (n) the concluding part of a speech; flowery, rhetorical speech |
| plangent | (adj) pounding, thundering, resounding |
| prolix | (adj) long-winded, verbose |
| propitiate | (v) to appease, to conciliate |
| puerile | (adj) childish, immature, jejune, nugatory |
| puissance | (n) power, strength |
| pusillanimous | (adj) cowardly, craven |
| remonstrate | (v) to protest, object |
| sagacious | (adj) having sound judgment; perceptive, wise; like a sage |
| salacious | (adj) lustful, lascivious, bawdy |
| salutary | (adj) remedial, wholesome, causing improvement |
| sanguine | (adj) cheerful, optimistic, confident |
| saturnine | (adj) gloomy, dark, sullen, morose |
| sententious | (adj) aphoristic or moralistic; epigrammatic; tending to moralize excessively |
| stentorian | (adj) extremely loud and powerful |
| stygian | (adj) gloomy, dark |
| sycophant | (n) toady, servile, self-seeking flatterer; parasite |
| tendentious | (adj) biased; showing marked tendencies |
| timorous | (adj) timid, fearful, diffident |
| tyro | (n) novice, greenhorn, rank amateur |
| vitiate | (v) to corrupt, debase, spoil, make ineffective |
| voluble | (adj) fluent, verbal, having easy use of spoken language |