GRE VOCABULARY BUILDER

The best way to develop a powerful vocabulary is to read extensively and well. However, it is possible to fine-tune your vocabulary by using flashcards. Here is a list of some of the most commonly used words found in GRE verbal tests.

Aberrant: abnormal or deviant
Admonish: warn; reprove
Alacrity: cheerful promptness; eagerness
Aver: state confidently
Baleful: deadly; having a malign influence; ominous
Beneficent: kindly; doing good
Bombastic: pompous; using inflated language
Burgeon: grow forth; send out buds
Cacophonous: discordant; inharmonious
Capricious: unpredictable; fickle
Cogent: convincing
Complaisant: trying to please; obliging
Daunt: intimidate; frighten
Deference: courteous regard for another’s wish
Diffidence: shyness
Dogmatic: opinionated; arbitrary; doctrinal
Ebullient: showing excitement; overflowing with enthusiasm
Elegy: poem or song expressing lamentation
Enervate: weaken
Engender: cause; produce
Fatuous: foolish; inane
Flout: reject; mock
Foment: stir up; instigate
Futile: useless; hopeless; ineffectual
Gainsay: deny
Goad: urge on
Grandiloquent: pompous; bombastic; using high-sounding language
Gullible: easily deceived
Harangue: long, passionate and vehement speech
Homogeneous: of the same kind
Hyperbole: exaggeration; overstatement
Iconoclastic: attacking cherished traditions
Immutable: unchangeable
Incongruity: lack of harmony; absurdity
Ingenuous: naïve and trusting; young; unsophisticated
Judicious: sound in judgement; wise
Jurisprudence: science of law
Knoll: little, round hill
Kudos: honor; glory; praise
Laconic: brief and to the point
Levee: earthen or stone embankment to prevent flooding
Loquacious: talkative
Lucid: easily understood; clear; intelligible
Malingerer: one who feigns illness to escape duty
Mendacious: lying; habitually dishonest
Morose: ill-humored; sullen; melancholy
Mundane: worldly as opposed to spiritual; everyday
Negate: cancel out; nullify; deny
Neophyte: recent convert; beginner
Obdurate: stubborn
Obsequious: slavishly attentive; servile; sycophantic
Onerous: burdensome
Oscillate: vibrate pendulum-like; waver
Partisan: one-sided; prejudiced; committed to a party
Pathological: pertaining to disease
Perfunctory: superficial; not thorough; lacking interest or care
Problematic: doubtful; unsettled; questionable
Qualified: limited; restricted
Quibble: minor objection or complaint
Quiescent: at rest; dormant; temporarily inactive
Recondite: abstruse; profound; secret
Refute: disprove
Repudiate: disown; disavow
Reverent: respectful; worshipful
Sage: person celebrated for wisdom
Solicitous: worried; concerned
Striated: marked with parallel bands; grooved
Supposition: hypothesis; surmise
Tenuous: thin; slim; rare
Torpor: lethargy; sluggishness; dormancy
Tractable: docile; easily managed
Truculence: aggressiveness; ferocity
Ubiquitous: being everywhere; omnipresent
Vacillate: waver; fluctuate
Verbose: wordy
Vituperative: abusive; scolding
Volatile: changeable; explosive; evaporating rapidly
Warranted: justified; authorized
Welter: turmoil; bewildering jumble
Zealot: fanatic; person who shows excessive zeal

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