Gre Hit Parade Set 5

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RECALCITRANT

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RECALCITRANT (ri KAL suh trunt) adj obstinately defiant of authority or guidance, difficult to manage

• Joe was so recalcitrant he refused to do anything he was instructed to do, even something he liked to do, simply because someone told him to do it.

• The bank sent someone to repossess the recalcitrant debtor's car and furniture after he refused to make payments for five months.

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RECONDITE

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RECONDITE (rek AHN dyte) adj hidden, concealed, difficult to understand, obscure

• Searching for information about the town's recondite origins was a lot like doing detective work.

• While it makes perfect sense to physicists, quantum mechanics has always been recondite knowledge to me.

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RECONNOITER

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RECONNOITER (ree kuh NOY tur) v to engage in reconnaissance, make a preliminary inspection of

• We sent Bob to reconnoiter the party when we first arrived, in order to see who was in the other rooms.

• Our attempts to reconnoiter the area for a good camping site were cut short when it grew dark, so we ended up sleeping in the car.

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REDOLENT

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REDOLENT (RED oh lunt) adj fragrant, suggestive or evocative

• The dorm rooms were redolent with a fragrance of stale beer and cold pizza that brought me back to my college days.

• The city in spring, redolent of cherry blossoms, hardly seemed like the same place that had been so gray and uninviting just two months earlier.

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REDOUBTABLE

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REDOUBTABLE (ri DOWT uh bull adj awe-inspiring, worthy of honor

• He came from a redoubtable family, just one of many of its members to have served in the highest positions in the country.

• There are many folk songs and stories about the legend of the redoubtable John Henry, who beat the steam drill in a tunneling contest in 1872.

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REFULGENT

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REFULGENT (ri FUL junt) adj radiant, shiny, brilliant

• The refulgent gleam of the motorcycle's chrome was his pride and joy.

• Her refulgent smile seemed to light up the evening, though that might just have been the light shining off her braces.

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REGALE

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REGALE (ri GAYL) v to delight or entertain, feast

• Joshua regaled his listeners with tales of his world travels while he was the owner of a famous flea circus.

• The visiting dignitaries were regaled with a lavish meal and an elaborate dance and musical performance.

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RELEGATE

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RELEGATE (RE luh gayt) v to forcibly assign, especially to a lower place or position

• As the youngest member of the troupe, I was relegated to the back end of the dancing donkey costume.

• He always relegated paying bills to the bottom of his "to do" list, since he hated to be reminded of how little money was in his checking account.

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REMONSTRATE

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REMONSTRATE (ri MAHN strayt) v to protest, object

• When I was a kid, I frequently remonstrated with my mom when she made me take my little brother with me to the park.

• My mother remonstrated against the city's plan to tear down the park to build a parking lot.

Remonstrations are objections as are remonstrances, though the latter is usually more formal.

• Despite her advisor's remonstrations, Linda has decided to take eighteen units of underwater basket weaving next semester, and nothing else.

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RENEGE

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RENEGE (ri NIG) v to fail to honor a commitment, go back on a promise

• I can't believe you reneged on your promise to paint the house for the third weekend in a row.

• The government reneged on its commitment to provide asylum for the refugees, turning them back at the border instead.

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RENT

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RENT (rent) v torn, split apart, pierced as by a sound

• The doll was rent limb from limb as the boys fought over it; each combatant was left holding an arm or a leg.

Rend is the present tense. Rent can also be a noun, meaning a tear or breach.

• He was determined to rend restitution from the company that had destroyed his health, even if it took years of fighting.

• The starship and its valiant crew were hurled through a medium-sized rent in the space-time continuum.

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REPINE

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REPINE (ri PYNE) v to feel or express dejection or discontent, long for

• The old man repined for his lost youth, when everything seemed so much more exciting than it was now.

• I got sick of all her repining for her former beau; she was the one who dumped him, after all.

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REPUDIATE

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REPUDIATE (re PY00 dee ayt) v to refuse to have anything to do with, disown

• The psychic repudiated his earlier claims when it became clear his client had not in fact won the lottery the day before.

• David threatened to repudiate his daughter if she got any more tattoos or had any more body parts pierced, but she knew he was just bluffing.

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RESCIND

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RESCIND (ri SIND) v to invalidate, repeal, retract

• The headmaster rescinded his recent dress code decree when he realized he just couldn't take looking at that many penny loafers every day.

• After the so-called "Espresso Riots," the mayor rescinded the tax on lattes.

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RETICENT

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RETICENT (RET uh sunt) adj quiet, reserved, reluctant to express thoughts and feelings

• She was reticent about the party, but we suspected she had had more fun than she was letting on.

• The department head was reticent about his plans for filling the new position, giving no clues as to whom he planned to promote.

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RISIBLE

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RISIBLE (RYZ uh bul) adj hilarious, provoking laughter

• The mating horses created a risible sight for Rita, who had never been to a farm before.

Though it is a less common usage, risible can also be used to describe people who are inclined to be amused.

• Rita herself, though, is a fairly risible individual; the song "I Love to Laugh" could have been written just for her.

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RUBRIC

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RUBRIC (ROO brik) n authoritative rule, heading, title, or category

• The rubric used to score the writing samples emphasizes structure over content.

• The phenomenon is often examined under the rubric of psychology rather than physiology.

Another more obscure version of rubric is as an adjective meaning reddish or written in red, and the meanings are actually related. Instructions in church books used to be written in red, so both the color and what it is used for was named for the ruby.

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SALACIOUS

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SALACIOUS (suh LAY shus) adj appealing to or causing sexual desire, bawdy

• Magazines containing salacious material are kept behind the counter in the bookstore, so you'll have to ask the clerk if you want to see them.

• Tabloids rely in large part on the public's salacious curiosity in order to stay in business, and our titillation seems to overcome our outrage often enough for it to work.

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SALIENT

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SALIENT (SAYL yunt) adj prominent, protruding, conspicuous, highly relevant

• The salient fact that I had failed to notice at first was that my ride had left me stranded at the club with no way to get home.

• The salient root sticking several inches out of the ground caught my foot and caused me to fall unceremoniously on my butt.

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SALUTARY

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SALUTARY (SAL yoo ter ee) adj remedial, wholesome, causing improvement

• Paul was dismayed to hear the teacher say that she thought summer school would be salutary for his math skills.

• The physical therapy she had undergone was having a salutary effect on her knees; she could almost walk without discomfort now.

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SANCTIMONY

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SANCTIMONY (SAYNKT i moh nee) n self-righteousness, pretended piety

• His sanctimony was laughable, since he was the most self-absorbed, ruthless jerk I'd ever met.

Sanctimonious means hypocritically pretending to be pious or being excessively pious.

• Spare me your sanctimonious blather; you're no better than I am.

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SANCTION

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SANCTION (SAYNK shun) n authoritative permission or approval; a penalty intended to enforce compliance

This one can be confusing, since it has two, nearly opposite, meanings: approval and penalty.

• Without the sanction of the planning commission, we cannot proceed with the renovation.

• Since he received the publisher's sanction to reproduce part of the book in his installation, he was able to proceed with the planned opening of the exhibit.

• Sanctions were one of the tools used by the international community to pressure South Africa into ending its practice of apartheid.

• After receiving the official sanction of the ethics committee, the lawyer was disbarred.

Sanction can also be used as a verb. Up until the last few decades it only meant to encourage or approve, but it has recently come to mean to punish as well.

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SANGUINE

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SANGUINE (SAYN gwun) adj cheerful, confident, optimistic

• His sanguine attitude was baffling to me, since it seemed clear that he was going to lose the race.

• She was so sanguine of success that she booked the honeymoon suite before she had even proposed.

According to Aristotle, sanguine personalities were caused by too much blood. This book contains vocabulary words based on three other personality types that he identified based on bodily fluids...can you find the rest?

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SAP

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SAP (sap) v to enervate or weaken the vitality of

• Her energy was sapped by the wasting fever; every day she felt a little weaker.

As a noun used informally, a sap is a gullible person, a fool.

• I can't believe I was such a sap that I believed she would call even though I saw her throw my phone number out the window.

A sap can also be a blackjack (a short, leather-covered club) or to hit somebody with such a weapon.

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SATURNINE

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SATURNINE (SAT ur nyn) adj gloomy, dark, sullen, morose

• Pedro's saturnine countenance made me think he was either very unhappy or suffering from a bad case of indigestion.

• The saturnine principal scared the students with his dark glares, but really he was a pretty nice guy underneath the brooding exterior.

Saturnine is similar in definition to melancholy. Like mercurial, it draws its name from astrology and the gods associated with certain planets.

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SCURVY

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SCURVY (SKUR vee) adj contemptible, despicable

• He felt a little guilty about the scurvy trick he had pulled on his friend to get her to loan him a hundred dollars by saying he needed it to visit his dying mother.

"Avast, ye scurvy dog" is a common comment to hear one pirate say to another.

Scurvy is a vitamin C deficiency that was a familiar part of a sailor's life before the days of refrigeration, canning and supplements, so it makes sense that pirates would incorporate this into their vocabulary as an insult.

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SEDULOUS

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SEDULOUS (SED yoo lus) adj diligent, persistent, hard-working

• His sedulous efforts to organize the conference were rewarded when the entire event went off perfectly.

• After years of hard work, he found the missing piece to the puzzle he had so sedulously sought, which allowed him to solve the mystery of the pilot's disappearance.

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SEINE

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SEINE (sayn) n a large net hung out and dragged in to catch fish

• The fishermen were extremely surprised when they caught a mermaid in their seine.

Seine also means to fish using a seine, and the Seine is a river in the middle of Paris in which people might seine... or something like that.

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SERE

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SERE (seer) adj withered, arid

• Some people have looked at pictures of the sere surface of Mars and imagined the possibility of terraforming that might change the and landscape into something habitable by humans.

• Even the sere vegetation at the edge of the desert sent forth new shoots when the brief rains came.

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SEMINAL

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SEMINAL (SEM uh nul) adj like a seed, constituting a source, originative

• He wrote the seminal text on robotics; people still study it sixty years later.

• The seminal idea that had taken root in his mind years earlier grew into the plans for the invention that was to make him a millionaire.

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SHARD

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SHARD (shard) n a piece of broken pottery or glass, any small piece or part

• The archaeologist was able to find enough shards of pottery at the site that she could piece them together to form the contours of the original bowl.

• He tried to collect the shards of his dignity after his pants fell down in the middle of his speech.

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SIMPER

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SIMPER (SIM pur) v to smirk, to say something with a silly, coy smile • Her simpering praise for the famous actress made me want to throw up.

• He simpered some feeble attempt at an apology that no one believed.

As a noun, simper is the silly smile itself.

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SINGULAR

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SINGULAR (SING yoo lur) adj exceptional, unusual, odd

• The singular events of the past week had me thinking I'd lost my mind; first my pet turtle presents me with a list of demands, and then it starts raining humans instead of cats and dogs.

• He was singularly ill suited to ballet since he had two left feet.

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SINUOUS

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SINUOUS (SIN yoo us) adj winding, curving, moving lithely, devious

• We were mesmerized by the sinuous weaving of the cobra as the snake charmer sang to it.

• The sinuous pattern on the vase was like a river winding back and forth.

• It became increasingly difficult to follow the argument as her sinuous logic wound around and around itself.

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SLAKE

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SLAKE (slayk) v to satisfy, quench, lessen the intensity of

• I was looking forward to getting back to the porch and having a julep to slake my thirst.

• His anger slaked somewhat when he realized he had simply parked his car in the wrong spot, and that no one had stolen it.

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SODDEN

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SODDEN (SAHD un) adj soaked or drenched, unimaginative, dull

• I managed to get my pants all wet by sitting on the sodden ground.

• Sodden with drink and sleep, he could barely form a sentence.

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SOLICITOUS

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SOLICITOUS (suh LI sit us) adj concerned and attentive, eager

• It was nice of her to be so solicitous of my comfort as to offer me the couch, but I was fine sleeping on the floor.

Her solicitous boyfriend hovered at her elbow all evening, trying to anticipate her every wish, which she started to find somewhat annoying after about five minutes.

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SOLVENT

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SOLVENT (SAHL vunt) adj able to meet financial obligations

• I was solvent for the first time in years, and to celebrate my solvency I went gambling and lost all my money, at which point I had once again become insolvent and had to borrow rent money from my parents again.

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SOPHISTRY

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SOPHISTRY (SAH fis tree) n fallacious reasoning; plausible but faulty logic

• I'm such a sucker for sophistry; I can never see through the convincing surface to the false logic underneath.

• The environmentalists claimed that the distinction between "strategic harvesting" and "clear cutting" was merely a political sophistry designed to hide the lumber industry's plans.

The Greek root so ph- gave rise to many English words about knowledge—either the love of it, the possession of it, or the lack of it. Philosophy is a love or pursuit of knowledge, and someone with great knowledge of the world might be called sophisticated. Sophistry is somewhat on the opposite path.. .as is sophomoric.

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SORDID

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SORDID (SOR did) ad] characterized by filth, grime, or squalor, foul

• The sordid tale of deceit and betrayal in the criminal
underworld became an immediate bestseller.

• Without any sanitation at all, the sordid slums at the edge of town were likely to suffer another cholera epidemic.

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SPECIOUS

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SPECIOUS (SPEE shus) ad] seeming true, but actually false, misleadingly attractive

• The specious "get rich quick" promises of pyramid schemes have suckered countless people over the years.

• The teenager's specious argument for why she should be allowed to stay out past curfew failed to convince her parents.

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SPENDTHRIFT

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SPENDTHRIFT (SPEND thrift) n one who spends money wastefully

• Olivia was an incorrigible spendthrift; she bought things she would never use and didn't even particularly like.

Spendthrift can also be an adjective.

• Their spendthrift extravagance soon exhausted their small bank account.

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SPLENETIC

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SPLENETIC (spli NET ik) adj bad-tempered, irritable

• The patient became particularly splenetic whenever his spleen was bothering him, so the nurses stayed out of his room those days.

• Her boss became splenetic whenever anyone asked him about a raise; nothing seemed to irritate him more.
Splenetic also means relating to the spleen, which was the seat of ill temper in classical knowledge.

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SPURIOUS

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SPURIOUS (SPYOOR ee us) adj lacking authenticity or validity, false, counterfeit

• His spurious claim that he had found the fountain of youth was soon proven to be the fraud everyone had suspected.

• It was years before anyone discovered that the painting attributed to the young Picasso was spurious, having been painted by a not very famous artist who made his living by painting those pictures you find in hotel rooms.

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SQUALID

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SQUALID (SKWAH lid) adj sordid, wretched and dirty as from neglect

• The squalid living conditions the migrant laborers were forced to endure were simply inhuman; no one should have to live like that.

Squalor is a wretched or filthy condition.

• Why she was willing to live in squalor, no one could figure out, but she seemed happy enough with two months' worth of dishes in the sink and refuse lying all around.