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88 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Plucky
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Courageous
"Matt was a plucky guy, he managed to score a win against one of the best chess players in the school" |
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Efficacious
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Effective
"Matt's cough syrup expired 2 months ago and was no longer efficacious, which lead him to cough all night" |
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Besotted
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Very infatuated
"Juliet became besotted with the young Romeo" |
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Gerrymander
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Manipulate votes
"The cunning politician gerrymandered the entire city to get re-elected" |
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Recrimination
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Mutual accusation
"When the politician heard of his rival's accusation, he made a recrimination" |
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Peruse
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Read carefully
"People don't peruse important documents, and usually rush to the bottom of the page and stamp their signature" |
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Vanquish
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Defeat thoroughly
"The Argentinian team was vanquished by the German team in World Cup Final" |
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Snub
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Reject Bluntly
"Peter was an obvious qualifier for the team, but the selectors snubbed him and chose a weaker competitor" |
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Unscrupulous
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Unethical
"The lawyer was unscrupulous in using every deceit and manipulation to secure a victory for himself" |
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Amok
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Frenzied
"Wherever the rockstar went, his legions of fans ran amok through the streets to get a glimpse of him" |
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Expurgate |
Censor |
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Timorous
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Shy
"Tim was timorous when he met with guests at his home" |
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Cupidity
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Greed for money
"Some people believe that amassing as much as wealth as possible is the meaning of life, yet they often realize that cupidity brings anything but happiness" |
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Kowtow
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Bow to
"Paul kowtowed to her boss so often she herself became nauseated by his sycophancy" |
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Impugn
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Call into question
"Everyone tried to impugn Darwin's theory at first" |
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Brook
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Put up with
"The teacher did not brook any noise while she was at the chalkboard" |
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Discursive
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Tangential
"The author of Moby Dick was discursive, often cutting the action short to spend 20 pages on the history of a whale" |
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Ineffable
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Can't be put in words
"While art critics can pinpoint a work's greatness, much of why a piece captures our imagination is completely ineffable" |
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Maudlin
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Overly emotional
"Maudlin expression of sympathy" |
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Ostentatious
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Showy
"Peter wanted to buy stone lions for front of the house, but Casey convinced him that such a display would be too ostentatious for such a modest house in an unassuming neighborhood" |
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Rile
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Annoy
"Don't get all riled up" |
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Rarefied
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Refined
"The rarefied conversation of brilliant scholars" |
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Concomitant |
Accompanying |
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Respite
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Pause from work
"Every afternoon, the company has a respite in which workers play foosball or board games" |
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Haughty
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Arrogant
"The haughty manager never believed in any of his subordinates" |
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Anodyne
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That which soothes
"Muzak, played in certain departmental stores is supposed to be an anodyne" "The anodyne properties of certain drugs" |
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Ponderous
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Moving slowly
"Laden with several kilos of books, the freshman moved ponderously across the hall" |
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Ascendancy
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Dominant position
"The ascendancy of Brazil football team is clear, they have won the World Cup multiple times" |
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Pedestrian
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Lacking imagination
"The writer's new poem was pedestrian" |
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Acme
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Highest point
"Michael Jackson reached his acme of popularity in the 90s" |
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Protean
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Versatile
"Picasso was a protean artist, often drastically changing his style and perception" |
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Mendicant
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Beggar
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Callow
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Inexperienced
"Los Angeles is known for callow out-of-towners hoping to make it big" |
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Veneer
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Disguising layer
"Her remarks revealed her meanness through the mere veneer of shallowness" |
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Sartorial
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Relating to clothes
"Emmy faced a sartorial dilemma of what to wear for her prom-night" |
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Fell
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Evil
"The ever fell Voldemort from the Harry Potter series" |
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Lascivious
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Perverted
"The novel Lolita mentions of Humbert Humbert, a lascivious man, who falls in love with an underage girl" |
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Sanctimonious
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Holier-than-thou, hypocritically pious
"Matt sounds like those sanctimonious people who preach others of the evils of drugs while they drink one beer after another" |
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Vicarious
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Not lived directly, experienced at secondhand
"Just read about mountain climbing and felt vicarious excitement" |
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Hoary
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Ancient
"Hoary jokes" |
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Garrulous
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Talkative
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Inanity
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Silliness
"There's no point in trying to take point from inanity" |
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Facile
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Lacking depth
"Too facile a solution for such complex problem" |
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Pittance
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Small amount
"The hospital bill was so huge for Tim's surgery, any amount by his parent would be a mere pittance" |
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Byzantine
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Overly complex
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Brusquely
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Bluntly
"Boss often brusquely asks his subordinates anything he wants, even coffee" |
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Sanguine
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Cheerful
"With over 2000 words to learn for summer, Paul was anything but sanguine" |
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Elegiac
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Mournful
"Only few can listen to the elegiac opening bars of the Moonlight sonata without the urge to cry" |
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Vacuous
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Lacking intelligence
"To the journalists' pointed questions, the senator gave a vacuous response" |
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Rapprochement
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Reconciliation
"It was a hard task getting Ann and her mother-in-law to agree for a rapprochement" |
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Tawdry
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Cheap, showy
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Phantasmagorical
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Illusive
"Claiming to see a Unicorn is nothing but phantasmagorical" |
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Stem
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Limit growth
"Punjab police must soon take initiative to stem the increasing use of drugs in the state" |
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Culminate
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Reach high point
"Beethoven's musical genius culminated in the 9th symphony, which many consider to be his greatest work" |
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Lampoon
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Poke fun at
"The mayor mocked the opposite party by lampooning at their representative" |
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Insolent
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Rude
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Incense
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Make furious
"When jack bought tickets for a football game on the day of their wedding aniversary, Jill was incensed" |
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Amorphous
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Shapeless
"His study plan for the GRE was at best amorphous, he would do questions from random pages from the book" |
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Wax
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Increase gradually
"Her enthusiasm for the diva's new album waxed with each song; by the end of the album, it was her favorite CD yet" |
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Scintillating
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Brilliant
"The two scholars from Stanford had a scintillating coversation upon Artificial Intelligence" |
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Burgeoning
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Grow rapidly
"China's housing market is burgeoning, but experts predict it's a bubble waiting to burst much like US real estate bubble of 2008" |
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Genteel
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Refined
"A genteel old lady" |
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Imbroglio
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Confusing situation
"Thanks to the Payroll imbroglio, he recently sat for seven hours manually entering salary information for his 130 new employees" |
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Malady
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Illness
"The town was struck by a malady, forcing many to be bedridden for two weeks" |
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Hedge
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Avoid
"The police commissioner hedged, when asked about mysterious kidnappings happening in the town for a while" |
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Glean |
Collect |
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Maladroit
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Clumsy
"As a child she was quite maladroit, but as an adult she grew to be an adept dancer" |
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Malapropism
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Confusing similar words
"The comedian used a few malapropisms to cheer people up before he started his actual performance" |
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Peevish
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Irritable
"Our manager is quite peevish, so the rest of us tip-toe around him, hoping not to set another one of his fits" |
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Abrogate
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Overturn a law
"In agreement with the Company's resolutions, the workers' union abrogated their right to strike for 2 years" |
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Unprepossessing
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Unremarkable
"World leaders coming to meet Gandhi would expect a lowering sage, and often would be surprised by the unprepossessing by the little man dressed only in a loincloth and a shawl" |
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Eponym
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Derived from a name
"Alexandria, Egypt is an eponym because it is named after Alexander the great" |
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Redress
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Correct unfairness
"Barry redressed to her wife by surprising her on their wedding anniversary since he kept forgetting the same in recent years" |
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Facetious
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Humorous
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Schadenfreude
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Joy in others' suffering
"His brother's rejection in the company interview gave Peter a twinge of Schadenfreude" |
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Zeitgeist
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Spirit of the times
"Every decade has a zeitgeist: the 1990's was a prosperous time in which the promise of American dream never seemed more palpable" |
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Lionize
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Celebrate
"Republicans continue to lionize Ronald Reagan as their hero." |
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Quip
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Witty remark
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Goad
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Stab or urge on as if with a pointed stick
"Peter did not want to enter the race, but his brother, through a myriad of taunting words, goaded him into signing up for it" |
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Aboveboard
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Honest
"The companies dealings were aboveboard, claimed the defense lawyer." |
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Ignoble
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Dishonorable
"The 1920s, the World Series was rigged; an ignoble act which baseball took decades to recover from" |
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Desiccated
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Lacking vitality
"His rhymes, once the most inventive in genre, have been badly desiccated" |
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Vaunted
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Boasted about
"Mark boasted about his ping-pong skills for a long time, but when he entered the office tournament, his much vaunted skills vanished when he lost all the matches" |
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Bridle
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Restrained
"New curfew laws have bridled people's tendency to go out at night" |
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Factitious
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Artificial
"The defendant's story was largely factitious and did not accord with eyewitness testimony" |
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Promulgated
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Officially make known
"The President wanted to promulgate the success of treaty negotiations" |
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Apposite |
Appropriate |
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Behoove
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Be one's duty
"It would behoove me to study hard for GRE exam" |
