Barron's GRE Verbal Reasoning Vocabulary (Units 1-80)

Apogee

n. the point in an orbit most distant from the body being orbited; the highest point ex. The Ottoman Empire reached its apogee in the seventeenth century, when it controlled a territory running from a Budapest to North Africa.

Adaptive

relation to adaptation, an alteration in structure or habits by which a species improves its condition in relationship to its environment

Belie

v. to contradict; misrepresent; give a false impression ex. The boxer's childlike face belies the ferocity with which he can attack opponents in the ring.

Aggrandize

v. to make larger or greater ex. One of the concerns of the framers of the U.S. Constitution was that one branch of government would try to aggrandize itself at the expense of others.

Brazen

adj. bold; shameless ex. The brazen student irritated his teacher by saying that he could learn more from a day spend "surfing the World Wide Web than a day spent in school.

Banal

adj. commonplace; trite ex. The writer has a gift for making even the most banal observations seem important and original.

Astringent

adj. harsh; severe ex. Bob tends to nick himself when he shaves, so he uses an astringent aftershave to stop the bleeding.

Abject

adj. miserable; pitiful ex. John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath portrays the abject poverty of many people during the Great Depression.

Affinity

n. fondness, liking, similarity ex. The female students in the class felt an affinity for the ancient Greek playwright Euripides because he sympathized with women, slaves, and other despised members of his society.

Accretion

n. growth in size or increase in amount ex. In the 1960s, the American geophysicist Harry Hess conceived the idea of seafloor spreading, a process in which the new crust in the ocean is continually generated by igneous processes at the crests of the mid-oceanic ridges, causing a steady accretion of the crust.

Artifact

n. item made by human craft ex. Marists content that appreciation of art has declined because capitalism has trained people to perceive human artifacts as commodities, and has alienated people from nature, their true humanity, and their creations.

Aspersion

n. slander; false rumor ex. The Republic of Singapore is a young democracy, and its leaders often respond strongly to journalists and others who cast aspersions on their integrity.

Blandishment

n. flattery; v. to coax with flattery ex. Despite the salesperson's blandishments, Donna did not buy the car.

Approbation

n. praise; approval ex. The Congressional Medal of Honor is the highest approbation an American soldier can receive.

Archeology

n. the study of material evidence of past human life ex. Carbon-14 dating is of great use in archeology because it can determine the age of specimens as old as 35,000 years, but it is of less use in geology because most of the processes studied in this field occurred millions of years ago.

Amenable

adj. agreeable; cooperative; suited ex. The young writer is amenable to suggestions for improving her prose style to make it more interesting.

Austere

adj. stern; unadorned ex. Deism is an austere belief that reflects the predominant philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment: a universe symmetrical and governed by rationality.

Alloy

n. a combination; a mixture of two or more metals ex. Scientists formulate allows to create properties that re not possessed by natural metals or other substances.

Bolster

v. to give a boost to; prop up; support ex. The president has visited the state several times to bolster his sagging popularity there.

Arrest

v. to stop; to seize ex. Temporary arrest of the patient's respiration made it easier for the doctor to perform surgery.

Aggregate

adj. amounting to a whole; total; v. to collect into a mass; n. collective mass or sum ex. The aggregate wealth of a country includes private as well as public resources and possessions. ex. Portals are Web sites designed to aggregate information and are used as a starting point on the Web.

Bovine

adj. cow-like ex. Following the slow-moving group of students up the long path to the school's entrance, the word "bovine" popped into the English teacher's mind.

Axiomatic

adj. taken for granted ex. In nineteenth-century geology, uniformitarianism was the antithesis of catastrophism, asserting that it was axiomatic that natural law and processes do not fundamentally change, and that what we observe now is essentially the same as what occurred in the past.

Adamant

adj. uncompromising; unyielding ex. Despite widespread opposition to his plan, the political party's leader is adamant that the party must move to the center to appeal to moderate voters.

Argot

n. a specialized vocabulary used by a group ex. Writers of crime fiction often use the argot of criminals and detectives to create a realistic atmosphere.

Banter

n. playful conversation ex. The governor engaged in some banter with reporters before getting to the serious business of the new conference.

Anodyne

n. something that calms or soothes pain; adj. relaxing, or capable of soothing pain ex. Some people use alcohol as an anodyne to numb their emotional pain. ex. The public relations officer is remarkably anodyne; all he does is mouth comforting, politically correct platitudes, saying nothing of substance.

Antecedent

n. something that comes before ex. Historical factors, such as the increased emphasis on the individual, the invention of printing, and the rise of the bourgeoisie, contributed to make the Reformation, which has its antecedents in the reform movement within the Roman Catholic Church, into a much broader phenomenon that created powerful churches that grew to rival the original church.

Amenity

n. something that increases comfort ex. Many amenities considered normal and necessary by people in developed countries, such as indoor plumbing, were luxuries only a few generations ago.

Abeyance

n. temporary suppression or suspension ex. A good judge must hold his or her judgement in abeyance until all the facts in a case have been presented

Abscission

n. the act of cutting; the natural separation of a leaf or other part of a plant; v. to cut off or away ex. Two scientists, Alan G. Williams and Thomas G. Whitham, have hypothesized that premature leaf abscission is an adaptive plant response to herbivorous attack. ex. The surgeon abscised a small growth on the patient's hand.

Apex

n. the highest point ex. In English literature, classicism reached its apex in the poetry of Alexander Pope and other Augustans.

Allure

n. the power to entice by charm; v. to entice by charm ex. Political groups in the United States often lobby Congress to use the allure of America's vast market as an incentive for countries to pursue policies in accordance with American policies. ex. The idea of a clockwork universe is very alluring to some people because it explains how the universe was created, yet allows human beings to live in it without believing in supernatural intervention.

Aberrant

v. deviating from what is normal; n. something different from the usual or normal ex. When a person's behavior becomes aberrant, his or her peers may become concerned that the individual is becoming a deviant. ex. For centuries, solar eclipses were regarded as serious aberrations in the natural order.

Abstinence

v. the giving up of certain pleasures ex. The monk's vow of abstinence includes all intoxicating substances.

Ameliorate

v. to improve ex. Knowing they could not stop the spread of a contagion in a few days, health authorities worked to inhibit its spread and to ameliorate its effects by issuing warnings to the public and initiating immunization programs.

Assuage

v. to make less severe ex. On November 21, 1864, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln wrote the following in a letter to Mrs. Bixby of Boston, who has lost five sons in the battle: "I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Appropriate

v. to take possession for one's own use; confiscate ex. The invading army appropriating supplies from the houses of the local people.

Audacious

adj. bold; daring ex. The German army commander Erwin Rommel was known as the "Desert Fox" as a result of audacious surprise attacks on Allied forces in World War II.

Blasé

adj. bored because of frequent indulgence; unconcerned ex. We were amazed by John's blasé attitude toward school; he seems to have made it a rule to never open a book.

Analogous

adj. comparable; n. a similarity in some ways between things that are otherwise dissimilar, something that is comparable to something else ex. The psychology researcher's experiment postulates that the brain is analogous to a digital computer. ex. The idea of evolution in nature is sometimes misconstrued and applied by analogy to other areas in which there is scant evidence for its existence. ex. Some commentators have posited the existence of an analog to the Protestant work ethic in Chinese culture, which they call the "Confucian work ethic," to explain the economic success of some countries with large Chinese populations.

Assiduous

adj. diligent; hard-working ex. The assiduous people of Hong Kong live in a territory with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.

Arduous

adj. extremely difficult; laborious ex. The task of writing a research paper is arduous, but if it is broken down into logical steps it becomes less daunting.

Artless

adj. guileless; natural ex. The source of the meaning artless as guileless is the poet John Dryden, who wrote of William Shakespeare in 1672: "Such artless beauty lies in Shakespeare's wit... ."

Anomalous

adj. irregular; deviating from the norm ex. The psychologist discounted the anomalous behavior of the soldier, saying it was merely a short-term effect of the stress of the battle. ex. A moral dilemma that arises with humanity's ability to cloe is posed in the following hypothetical scenario: a pig that produces much more meat than a normal pic can be cloned, but the pig's life span would be cut in half because of anomalies in the cloning process: Is it right to clone such an animal?

Beneficent

adj. kindly; doing good ex. The theologian discussed the question of why a beneficent and omnipotent God allows bad things to happen to good people.

Avuncular

adj. like an uncle, benevolent and tolerant ex. Walter Cronkite, who was the anchorman of CBS news during much of the 1970s and 1980s, had an avuncular manner than made him one of America's most trusted personalities.

Abstemious

adj. moderate in appetite ex. Some research suggests that people with an abstemious lifestyle tend to live longer than people who indulge their appetites.

Bawdy

adj. obscene ex. Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is the story of a group of Christian pilgrims who entertain one another with stories, ranging from the holy to the bawdy, on their journey to Canterbury Cathedral.

Bacchanalian

adj. pertaining to riotous or drunken festivity; pertaining to revelry ex. For some people New Year's Eve is an occasion for bacchanalian revelry.

Bombastic

adj. pompous; using inflated language ex. Nearly lost in the senator's long, bombastic speech were several sensible ideas.

Antediluvian

adj. prehistoric ex. Most of our knowledge of antediluvian times has been built up as a result of one of humanity's grandest collaborative endeavors - the gathering, identification, dating, and categorization of fossils as they are discovered.

Affected

adj. pretentious, phony ex. It has been argued that the emphasis on so-called "proper English" leads to an unnatural and affected speech.

Aesthetic

adj. relating to beauty or art; n. a conception of what is artistically beautiful; also branch of philosophy dealing with beauty and art, and standards in judging them ex. Members of the english aesthetic movement, such as Oscar Wilde, were proponents of the doctrine of art for art's sake, which is the belief that art cannot and should not be useful for any purpose other than that of creating beauty. ex. The Gothic aesthetic dominated European art and architecture from approximately the twelfth to the fifteenth century.

Apropos

adj. relevant ex. Apropos of nothing, the speaker declared that the purpose of life is to love.

Boorish

adj. rude; insensitive ex. Bob apologized for his boorish behavior at the part, saying he hadn't realized that it was such a formal occasion.

Autonomous

adj. self-governing; independent ex. Some biologists have theorized that our belief in our ability to act as autonomous agents is in conformity with the theory of evolution because it gives us a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives that helps us to survive.

Apposite

adj. strikingly appropriate and relevant ex. The writer searched two dictionaries and a thesaurus before finding the perfectly apposite work he was looking for.

Ambiguous

adj. unclear or doubtful in meaning ex. The gender of the Mahayana Buddhist deity Avalokitesuara, the god of infinite mercy, is ambiguous in both China and Japan, where the god is sometimes called a goddess.

Abysmal

adj. very bad ex. The abysmal failure of the free market system in Russia has led some people to argue that the planned economy of the Soviet Union, while not perfect, was better suited to Russia's history and culture than Western-style capitalism.

Apothegm

n. a terse, witty saying (also spelled apophthegm) ex. One of the best-known political apothegms was written by the British historian Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Anarchy

n. absence of government; state of disorder; adj. lacking order or control; n. theory that all forms of government are oppressive and should be abolished, and also means the advocacy of this theory or the attempt to bring about anarchism ex. The American philosopher Robert Nozick does not advocate anarchy; rather, he argues for the merits of a minimal state that would not violate the natural rights of individuals. ex. The student of mythology speculated that Dionysos was created as a projection of the pleasure-loving, anarchic aspect of human nature. ex. Most political scientists do not believe anarchism to be a tenable theory of government.

Alacrity

n. cheerful willingness; eagerness; speed ex. The football coach was pleased to see the team get to work on the task of improving its tackling skills with alacrity.

Antipathy

n. dislike; hostility ex. Heathcliff, the protagonist of Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights, feelings great antipathy for Edgar Linton, the man who marries the woman he loves.

Ardor

n. great emotion or passion ex. The twentieth-century American poet Wallace Stevens said, "It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom."

Avarice

n. greed ex. Successful investment bankers are sometimes accused of avarice; their defenders, however, say that they are simply very good at what they do and should be awarded accordingly.

Behemoth

n. huge creature; anything very large and powerful ex. In the 1980s and 1990s, the trend in American business was toward increased privatization of government industries (such as power generation), partly because it was believed that private industry is more efficient and partly because foreign private companies were becoming commercial behemoths, outstropping government-owned companies in competitiveness.

Atavism

n. in biology, the reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence; individual or a part that exhibits atavism; return of a trait after a period of absence ex. Some modern political theorists reject nationalism as a tribal atavism.

Apathy

n. indifference ex. Apathy was high in the election because there was no major controversy or issue to arouse voter interest. ex. One criticism of the welfare state is that it makes people overly reliant on government, with the result that democracy is gradually weakened as citizens take a more apathetic and detached view of politics.

Analgesic

n. medication that reduces or eliminates pain ex. Aspirin (the trademark of the drug acetylsalicylic acid) is a powerful analgesic that was introduced in 1899 and is still one of the most effective medicines available to alleviate pain, fever, and inflammation.

Alchemy

n. medieval chemical philosophy based on changing metal into gold; a seemingly magical power or process of transmutation ex. Alchemy was the forerunner of the modern science of chemistry. ex. None of their friends could understand the mysterious alchemy that caused two people as different from one another as Rob and Barbara to fall in love.

Appellation

n. name ex. The discovery of the bones of a person with the appellation Kennewick Man in the state of Washington in 1996 has raised important questions about who the earliest people to populate America were.

Ascetic

n. one who practices self-denial; adj. self-denying or austere ex. Muslim ascetics consider the internal battle against human passions a greater jihad than the struggle against infidels. ex. The writer's ascetic lifestyle helped her to concentrate on finishing her novel. ex. One tradition of asceticism derives form the belief that the body is fundamentally bad and must be subjugated to the soul.

Amulet

n. ornament worn as a charm against evil spirits ex. The early Christian Church forbade the use of amulets, which had become common in the Roman Empire at the time the Christian Church began to develop.

Arabesque

n. ornate design featuring intertwined curves; a ballet position in which one leg is extended in back while the other supports the weight of the body ex. The ballerina stunned the audience with her perfectly executed arabesque.

Asylum

n. place of refuge or shelter ex. The Stoic, accused of seeking asylum in the consolations of philosophy, rebutted this charge, saying that Stoicism is simply the most prudent and realistic philosophy to follow.

Bard

n. poet ex. The great bards of English literature have all been masters of the techniques of verse.

Avocation

n. secondary occupation ex. Dan became so proficient at his avocation - computer programming - that he is thinking of giving up his job as a teacher to do it full time.

Asperity

n. severity; harshness; irritability ex. In his autobiography Gerald Trywhitt, the British writer, composer, artist, and aesthete, recounts a humorous incident: "Many years later, when I was sketching in Rome, a grim-looking Englishwoman came up to me and said with some asperity, ' I see you are painting MY view.'"

Adjunct

n. something added, attached, or joined ex. Speed walking, cross-country running, and marathons are normally regarded as adjuncts of track and field athletics since races in these sports are not normally held on a track.

Ambrosia

n. something delicious; the food of the gods ex. The combination of flavors in the Moroccan baked eggplant was pure ambrosia. ex. The food critic praised the chef for preparing what he called an "ambrosial meal".

Anachronism

n. something out of the proper time ex. Some experts regard the retirement age of 65 as an anachronism at a time when people in the developed world have much longer life expectancies than previously.

Ambivalence

n. the state of having conflicting emotional attitudes ex. John felt some ambivalence about getting married before finishing college. ex. In public opinion surveys in the United States, scientists rank second only to physicians in public esteem, yet most of the public is increasingly ambivalent about some of the implications for society of "Big Science" and its related technology.

Accrue

v. to accumulate; grow by additions ex. Regulating the growth of large companies when they begin to become monopolistic is a difficult task for government in a capitalist country if it limits monopolies too much, the nation's firms could become less competitive than foreign companies that enjoy the advantages accruing from greater monopolies.

Aver

v. to affirm; declare to be true Yogis aver that everyone has a guru, whether it be a person, God, or the experiences of the world, that helps him or her practice the yoga that is in accordance with his or her nature, and assists on the path toward enlightenment.

Appease

v. to calm; pacify; placate ex. Many historians have criticized British Prime Minister Neville CHamberlain for trying to appease Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

Admonish

v. to caution or reprimand ex. The judge admonished the jury to discount testimony that had been ruled inadmissible.

Amalgamate

v. to combine into a unified whole ex. In early 1999, six municipalities were amalgamated into an enlarged city of Toronto, Canada.

Adulterate

v. to corrupt or make impure ex. The unscrupulous company sells an adulterated version of the drug, and doesn't inform consumers that they are getting a less efficacious drug than they think they are getting.

Abate

v. to decrease; reduce ex. Nasa announced that it would delay the launch of the manned spacecraft until the radiation from the solar flares abated.

Abscond

v. to depart secretly ex. A warrant is out for the arrest of a person believed to have absconded with three million dollars.

Bifurcate

v. to divide into two parts ex. Contemporary physicists generally bifurcate their discipline into two parts - classical physics and modern physics; the former are the fields of study that were already well developed before the momentous breakthroughs of the early twentieth century by scientists such as Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr, and Wener Heisenberg, which inaugurated the age of modern physics. ex. Some people regard the Hindi-Buddhist philosophy on animals as more in accordance with the modern scientific view than the traditional Western view, since it doesn't posit a radical bifurcation of man and nature.

Bedizen

v. to dress in a vulgar, showy manner ex. Paul went to the costume party bedizened as a seventeenth-century French aristocrat.

Abdicate

v. to give up a position, right, or power ex. The appeals judge has abdicated his responsibility to review the findings of the high court.

Apprise

v. to inform ex. Nadine Cohodas's biography of the blues singer Dinah Washington keeps the reader apprised of the racism black Americans had to endure.

Allay

v. to lessen; ease; soothe ex. Improvements in antivirus software have allayed many people's fears of having their computers "infected" with malicious software.

Abjure

v. to reject; formally abandon ex. For a foreigner to become a U.S. citizen, he or she must take an oath abjuring allegiance to any other country and pledging to take up arms to defend the United States.

Alleviate

v. to relieve; improve partially ex. According to some commentators, one of the weaknesses of capitalism is that, although it is very efficient at increasing absolute wealth, it is not as successful at alleviating relative poverty; thus, a person living in a slum in America may be reasonably well off by historical standards, but he might perceive himself to be poor compared to members of the bourgeoisie, whom he sees regularly buying luxury goods that he is not able to afford.

Beatify

v. to sanctify; to bless; to ascribe a virtue to ex. In the year 2000 Pope John Paul II traveled to Fatima in Portugal to beatify two of the three children who said they saw the appearance of the Virgin Mary there in 1917. ex. Beatification is the second and next to last step on the path to sainthood.

Attenuate

v. to weaken ex. Modern digital radio equipment allows even signals that have been greatly attenuated to be transmitted by one station and received by another station.