click below
click below
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Beyond Hit Parade -2
GRE Beyond Hit Parade - 2
Question | Answer |
---|---|
abjure | (v) to renounce or reject solemnly; to recant; to avoid |
adumbrate | (v) to foreshadow vaguely or intimate; to suggest or outline sketchily; to obscure or overshadow |
anathema | (n) a solemn or ecclesiastical (religious) curse; accursed or thoroughly loathed person or thing |
anodyne | (adj/n) soothing, something that assuages or allays pain or comforts |
apogee | (n) farthest or highest point; culmination; zenith |
apostate | (n) one who abandons long held religious or political convictions |
apotheosis | (n) deification, glorification to godliness, an exhalted example, a model of excellence or perfection |
asperity | (n) severity, rigor, roughness, harshness, acrimony, irritability |
asseverate | (v) to aver, allege, assert |
assiduous | (adj) diligent, hardworking |
augury | (n) omen, portent |
bellicose | (adj) belligerent, pugnacious, warlike |
calumniate | (v) to slander, make a false accusation |
captious | (adj) disposed to point out trivial faults; calculated to confuse or entrap in argument |
cavil | (v) to find fault without good reason |
celerity | (n) speed, alacrity (think accelerate) |
chimera | (n) an illusion; originally a fire-breathing she-monster |
contumacious | (adj) insubordinate, rebellious |
debacle | (n) rout, fiasco, complete failure |
denouement | (n) an outcome or solution; the unraveling of a plot |
descry | (v) to discriminate or discern |
desuetude | (n) disuse |
desultory | (adj) random; aimless; marked by a lack of plan or purpose |
diaphanous | (adj) transparent, gauzy |
diffident | (adj) (adj) reserved, shy, unassuming; lacking in self-confidence |
dirge | (n) a song of grief or lamentation |
encomium | (n) glowing and enthusiastic praise; panegyric, tribute, eulogy |
eschew | (v) to shun or avoid |
excoriate | (v) to censure scathingly, to upbraid |
execrate | (v) denounce, feel loathing for, curse, declare to be evil |
exegesis | (n) critical examination, explication |
expiate | (v) to atone or make amends for |
extirpate | (v) to destroy, exterminate, cut out, exscind |
fatuous | (adj) silly, inanely foolish |
fractious | (adj) quarrelsome, rebellious, unruly, refractory, irritable |
gainsay | (v) to deny, dispute, contradict, oppose |
heterodox | (adj) unorthodox, heretical, iconoclastic |
imbroglio | (n) difficult or embarrassing situation |
indefatigable | (adj) not easily exhaustible; tireless; dogged |
ineluctable | (adj) certain; inevitable |
inimitable | (adj) one of a kind; peerless |
insouciant | (adj) unconcerned, carefree, heedless |
inveterate | (adj) deep rooted, ingrained, habitual |
jejune | (adj) vapid, uninteresting, nugatory, childish, immature, puerile |
lubricious | (adj) lewd, wanton, greasy, slippery |
mendicant | (n) a beggar, supplicant |
meretricious | (adj) cheap, gaudy, tawdry, flashy, showy; attracting by false show |
minatory | (adj) menacing, threatening |
nadir | (n) low point, perigee |
nonplussed | (adj) baffled, bewildered, at a loss for what to do or think |
obstreperous | (adj) noisily and stubbornly defiant, aggressively boisterous |
ossified | (adj) tending to become more rigid, conventional, sterile, and reactionary with age; literally, turned into bone |
palliate | (v) to make something seem less serious, to gloss over, to make less severe or intense |
panegyric | (n) formal praise, eulogy, encomium |
parsimonious | (adj) cheap, miserly |
pellucid | (adj) transparent, easy to understand, limpid |
peroration | (n) the concluding part of a speech; flowery, rhetorical speech |
plangent | (adj) pounding, thundering, resounding |
prolix | (adj) long-winded, verbose |
propitiate | (v) to appease, to conciliate |
puerile | (adj) childish, immature, jejune, nugatory |
puissance | (n) power, strength |
pusillanimous | (adj) cowardly, craven |
remonstrate | (v) to protest, object |
sagacious | (adj) having sound judgment; perceptive, wise; like a sage |
salacious | (adj) lustful, lascivious, bawdy |
salutary | (adj) remedial, wholesome, causing improvement |
sanguine | (adj) cheerful, optimistic, confident |
saturnine | (adj) gloomy, dark, sullen, morose |
sententious | (adj) aphoristic or moralistic; epigrammatic; tending to moralize excessively |
stentorian | (adj) extremely loud and powerful |
stygian | (adj) gloomy, dark |
sycophant | (n) toady, servile, self-seeking flatterer; parasite |
tendentious | (adj) biased; showing marked tendencies |
timorous | (adj) timid, fearful, diffident |
tyro | (n) novice, greenhorn, rank amateur |
vitiate | (v) to corrupt, debase, spoil, make ineffective |
voluble | (adj) fluent, verbal, having easy use of spoken language |