Cracking The Gre 2008: Beyond The Hit Parade Group 2

Front 1

Abjure

Back 1

v – to renounce or reject solemnly; to recant; to avoid

Front 2

Adumbrate

Back 2

v – to foreshadow vaguely or intimate; to suggest or outline sketchily; to obscure or overshadow

Front 3

Anathema

Back 3

n – a solemn or ecclesiastical (religious) curse; accursed or thoroughly loathed person or thing

Front 4

Anodyne

Back 4

adj/n – soothing, something that assuages or allays pain or comforts

Front 5

Apogee

Back 5

n – farthest or highest point; culmination; zenith

Front 6

Apostate

Back 6

n – one who abandons long-held religious or political convictions

Front 7

Apotheosis

Back 7

n – deification, glorification to godliness, an exalted example, a model of excellence or perfection

Front 8

Asperity

Back 8

n – severity, rigor; roughness, harshness; acrimony, irritability

Front 9

Asseverate

Back 9

v – to aver, allege, assert

Front 10

Assiduous

Back 10

adj – diligent, hard-working, sedulous

Front 11

Augury

Back 11

n – omen, portent

Front 12

Bellicose

Back 12

adj – belligerent, pugnacious, warlike

Front 13

Calumniate

Back 13

v – to slander, make a false accusation; calumny means slander, aspersion

Front 14

Captious

Back 14

adj – disposed to point out trivial faults, calculated to confuse or entrap in argument

Front 15

Cavil

Back 15

v –to find fault without good reason

Front 16

Celerity

Back 16

n – speed, alacrity; think accelerate

Front 17

Chimer

Back 17

a – an illusion; originally, an imaginary fire-breathing she-monster

Front 18

Contumacious

Back 18

adj – insubordinate, rebellious; contumely means insult, scorn, aspersion

Front 19

Debacle

Back 19

n – rout, fiasco, complete failure; My first attempt at a soufflé was a total debacle

Front 20

Denouncement

Back 20

n – an outcome or solution; the unraveling of a plot

Front 21

Descry

Back 21

v – to discriminate or discern

Front 22

Desuetude

Back 22

n – disuse: After years of desuetude, my French shills were finally put to use.

Front 23

Desultory

Back 23

adj – random; aimless; marked by a lack of plan or purpose: Her desultory performance impressed no one.

Front 24

Diaphanous

Back 24

adj – transparent, gauzy

Front 25

Diffident

Back 25

adj – reserved, shy, unassuming; lacking in self-confidence: Surprisingly, the CEO of the corporation had been a diffident youth.

Front 26

Dirge

Back 26

n – a song of grief or lamentation: We listened to the slow, funereal dirge

Front 27

Encomium

Back 27

n – glowing and enthusiastic praise; panegyric, tribute, eulogy

Front 28

Eschew

Back 28

v – to shun or avoid: She chose to eschew the movie theater, preferring to watch DVDs at home.

Front 29

Excoriate

Back 29

v – to censure scathingly, to upbraid

Front 30

Execrate

Back 30

v – denounce, feel loathing for, curse, declare to be evil

Front 31

Exegesis

Back 31

n – critical examination, explication

Front 32

Expiate

Back 32

v – to atone or make amends for: Pia Zadora has expiated her movie career by goods works and charity.

Front 33

Extirpate

Back 33

v – to destroy, exterminate, cut out, exscind

Front 34

Fatuous

Back 34

adj – silly, inanely foolish: I would ignore such a fatuous comment.

Front 35

Fractious

Back 35

adj – quarrelsome, rebellious, unruly, refractory, irritable

Front 36

Gainsay

Back 36

v – to deny, dispute, contradict, oppose

Front 37

Heterodox

Back 37

adj – unorthodox, heretical, iconoclastic

Front 38

Imbroglio

Back 38

n – difficult or embarrassing situation

Front 39

Indefatigable

Back 39

adj – not easily exhaustible; tireless, dogged

Front 40

Ineluctable

Back 40

adj – certain, inevitable

Front 41

Inimitable

Back 41

adj – one of a kind, peerless

Front 42

Insouciant

Back 42

adj – unconcerned, carefree, heedless

Front 43

Inveterate

Back 43

adj – deep rotted, ingrained, habitual

Front 44

Jejune

Back 44

adj – vapid, uninteresting, nugatory; childish, immature, puerile

Front 45

Lubricious

Back 45

adj – lewd, wanton, greasy, slippery

Front 46

Mendicant

Back 46

n – a beggar, supplicant

Front 47

Meretricious

Back 47

adj – cheap, gaudy, tawdry, flashy, showy; attracting by false show

Front 48

Minatory

Back 48

adj – menacing, threatening (reminds you of the Minotaur, a threatening creature indeed)

Front 49

Nadir

Back 49

n – low point, perigee

Front 50

Nonplussed

Back 50

adj – baffled, bewildered, at a loss for what to do or think

Front 51

Obstreperous

Back 51

adj – noisily and stubbornly defiant, aggressively boisterous

Front 52

Ossified

Back 52

adj – tending to become more rigid, conventional, sterile, and reactionary with age; literally, turned into bone

Front 53

Palliate

Back 53

v – to make something seem less serious, to gloss over, to make less severe or intense

Front 54

Panegyric

Back 54

n – formal praise, eulogy, encomium; panegyrical means expressing elaborate praise

Front 55

Parsimonious

Back 55

adj – cheap, miserly: A parsimonious person parses out his money with great difficulty.

Front 56

Pellucid

Back 56

adj – transparent, easy to understand, limpid

Front 57

Peroration

Back 57

n – the concluding part of a speech; flowery, rhetorical speech

Front 58

Plangent

Back 58

adj – pounding, thundering, resounding

Front 59

Prolix

Back 59

adj – long-winded, verbose; prolixity means verbosity: Mikhail Gorbachev is famous for his prolixity.

Front 60

Propitiate

Back 60

v – to appease; to conciliate; propitious means auspicious, favorable

Front 61

Puerile

Back 61

adj – childish, immature, jejune, nugatory

Front 62

Puissance

Back 62

n – power, strength; puissant means powerful, strong: The senator delivered a puissant speech to the convention.

Front 63

Pusillanimous

Back 63

adj – cowardly, craven

Front 64

Remonstrate

Back 64

v – to protest, object

Front 65

Sagacious

Back 65

adj – having sound judgment; perceptive, wise; like a sage

Front 66

Salacious

Back 66

adj – lustful, lascivious, bawdy

Front 67

Salutary

Back 67

adj – remedial, wholesome, causing improvement

Front 68

Sanguine

Back 68

adj – cheerful, confident, optimistic

Front 69

Saturnine

Back 69

adj – gloomy dark, sullen, morose

Front 70

Sententious

Back 70

adj – aphoristic or moralistic; epigrammatic; tending to moralize excessively

Front 71

Stentorian

Back 71

adj – extremely loud and powerful

Front 72

Stygian

Back 72

adj – gloomy, dark

Front 73

Sycophant

Back 73

n – toady, servile, self-seeking flatterer; parasite

Front 74

Tendentious

Back 74

adj – biased; showing marked tendencies

Front 75

Timorous

Back 75

adj – timid, fearful, diffident

Front 76

Tyro

Back 76

n – novice, greenhorn, rank amateur

Front 77

Vitiate

Back 77

v – to corrupt, debase, spoil, make ineffective

Front 78

Voluble

Back 78

adj – fluent, verbal, having easy use of spoken language