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GRE Beyond HP 2
Beyond the Hit Parade 2
| Term | Definition | Sentence |
|---|---|---|
| abjure | to reounce or reject solemnly; to recant; to avoid | (blank) |
| adumbrate | to foreshadow vaguely or intimate; to suggest or outline sketchily; to obscure or overshadow | (blank) |
| anathema | a solemn or ecclesastical curse; accursed or thoroughly loathed person or thing | (blank) |
| anodyne | southing, something that assuages or allays pain or comforts | (blank) |
| apogee | farthest or highest point; culmination; zenith | (blank) |
| apostate | one who abandons long-held religious or political convictions | (blank) |
| apotheosis | deification, glorification to godliness, an exalted example, a model of excellence or perfection | (blank) |
| asperity | severity, rigor; roughness, harshness; acrimony, irritability | (blank) |
| asseverate | to aver, allege, assert | (blank) |
| assiduous | diligent, hard-working, sedulous | (blank) |
| augury | omen, portent | (blank) |
| bellicose | belligerent, pugnacious, warlike | (blank) |
| calumniate | to slander, make a false accusation | (blank) |
| captious | disposed to point out trivial faults, calculated to confuse or entrap in argument | (blank) |
| cavil | to find fault without good reason | (blank) |
| celerity | speed, alacrity | think "accelerate" |
| chimera | an illusion; originally, an imaginary fire-breathing she-monster | (blank) |
| contumacious | insubordinate, rebellious | "contumely" means insult, scorn, aspersion |
| debacle | rout, fiasco, complete failure | My first attempt at a souffle was a total debacle. |
| Denouement | an outcome or solution; the unraveling of a plot | (blank) |
| descry | to discriminate or discern | (blank) |
| desuetude | disuse | After years of desuetude, my French skills were finally put to use. |
| desultory | random; aimless; marked by a lack of plan or purpose | Her desultory performance impressed no one. |
| diaphanous | transparent, gauzy | (blank) |
| diffident | reserved, shy, unassuming; lacking in self-confidence | Surprisingly, the CEO of the corporation had been a diffident youth. |
| dirge | a song of grief or lamentation | We listened to the slow, funereal dirge. |
| encomium | glowing and enthusiastic praise; panegyric, tribute, eulogy | (blank) |
| eschew | to shun or avoid | She chose to eschew the movie theater, preferring to watch DVDs at home. |
| excoriate | to censure scathingly, to upbraid | (blank) |
| execrate | denounce, feel loathing for, curse, declare to be evil | (blank) |
| exegesis | critical examination, explication | (blank) |
| expiate | to atone or make amends for | Pia Zadora has expiated her movie career by good works and charity. |
| extirpate | to destroy, exterminate, cut out, exscind | (blank) |
| fatuous | silly, inanely foolish | I would ignore such a fatuous comment. |
| gainsay | to deny dispute, contradict, oppose | (blank) |
| heterodox | unorthodox, heretical, iconoclastic | (blank) |
| imbroglio | difficult or embarrassing situation | (blank) |
| indefatigable | not easily exhaustible; tireless, dogged | (blank) |
| ineluctable | certain, inevitable | (blank) |
| inimitable | one of a kind, peerless | (blank) |
| insouciant | unconcerned, carefree, heedless | (blank) |
| inveterate | deep rooted, ingrained, habitual | (blank) |
| jejune | vapid, uninteresting, nugatory; childish, immature, puerile | (blank) |
| lubricious | lewd, wanton, greasy, slippery | (blank) |
| mendicant | a beggar, supplicant | (blank) |
| meretricious | ceap, gaudy, tawdry, flashy, showy; attracting by false show | (blank) |
| minatory | menacing, threatening | think Minotaur |
| nadir | low point, perigee | (blank) |
| nonplussed | baffled, bewildered, at a loss for what to do or think | (blank) |
| obsteperous | noisily and stubbornly defiant, aggressively boisterous | (blank) |
| ossified | tending to become more rigid, conventional, sterile, and reactionary with age; literally, turned into bone | (blank) |
| palliate | to make something seem less serious, to gloss over, to make less severe or intense | (blank) |
| panegyric | formal praise, eulogy, encomium; | "panegyrical" means expressing elaborate praise |
| parsimonious | cheap, miserly | A parsimonious person parse out his money with great difficulty. |
| pellucid | transparent, easy to understand, limpid | (blank) |
| peroration | the concluding part of a speech; flowery, rhetorical speech | (blank) |
| plangent | pounding, thundering, resounding | (blank) |
| prolix | long-winded, verbose | Michael Gorbachev is famous for his prolixity. |
| propitiate | to appease; to conciliate | "propitious" means auspicious, favorable |
| puerile | childish, immature, jejune, nugatory | (blank) |
| puissance | power, strength | The senator delivered a puissant speech to the convention. |
| pusillanimous | cowardly, craven | (blank) |
| remonstrate | to protest, object | (blank) |
| sagacious | having sound judgment; perceptive, wise; like a sage | (blank) |
| salacious | lustful, lascivious, bawdy | (blank) |
| salutary | remedial, wholesome, causing improvement | (blank) |
| sanguine | cheerful, confident, optimistic | (blank) |
| saturnine | gloomy, dark, sullen, morose | (blank) |
| sententious | aphoristic or moralistic; epigrammatic; tending to moralize excessively | (blank) |
| stentorian | extremely loud and powerful | (blank) |
| stygian | gloomy, dark | (blank) |
| sycophant | toady, servile, self-seeking flatterer; parasite | (blank) |
| tendentious | biased; showing marked tendencies | (blank) |
| timorous | timid, fearful, diffident | (blank) |
| tyro | novice, greenhorn, rank amateur | (blank) |
| vitiate | to corrupt, debase, spoil, make ineffective | (blank) |
| voluble | fluent, verbal, having easy use of spoken language | (blank) |
Created by:
purplehippos
Popular English Vocabulary sets