The Information Junkie: Verbal ability

Showing posts with label Verbal ability. Show all posts

GRE Words with Pictures

1) Credulous [ KREJ-uh'-luh' s ] (adjective)

Meaning: Willing to believe too readily, without adequate evidence or showing a lack of judgment or experience

Synonyms: believing, trustful, unsuspecting

Antonyms:skeptical, suspecting, suspicious, untrusting

Usage:
1) Would he find one man so credulous as to believe him?
2) She looks like a young Sigourney Weaver and plays the naive heroine well, if a little too credulous for my taste.
3) If this orator has a pose, it is a pose of simplicity, not credulous, but not openly perfidious either.

2) Pyromania [pahy-ruh-mey-nee-uh, -meyn-yuh] (noun)

Meaning: a compulsion to set things on fire.
Synonyms: firing, incendiarism, pyromania , setting fire, torching, touching off

Usage:

Taylor Momsen left her bandmates "grossed out" after her penchant for pyromania got out of hand - she once set fire to the uterus of her spayed pet dog

3) Glean [gleen] (verb)

Meaning: to gather slowly and laboriously, bit by bit.
Synonyms: accumulate, amass, ascertain, conclude, cull, deduce, extract, garner, gather, harvest, learn, pick, reap, select, sift, winnow
Antonyms: disassemble, disperse, scatter, separate

Usage:

1) They knew that he knew there were some scripts about not always entirely complete, but you gleaned what you could from them.
2) What great lesson can we glean from this simple fact that these three could only be constructed " with difficulty " ?
3) The above information was mostly gleaned from the book: The Story of Unity Theater.
4) Teachers huddle in dark corners and in hushed tones recite words of wisdom gleaned from these pages.
5) Jamie will explore insights gleaned over 25 years of youth work experience.

3) Platitude [plat-i-tood] (noun)
Meaning: dull, overused saying
Synonyms: banality, boiler plate, bromide, buzzword, chestnut, cliché, commonplace, corn, evenness, familiar tune, flatness, hackneyed saying, high camp, hokum, inanity, insipidity, monotony, motto, old chestnut, old story, potboiler, prosaicism, proverb, saw, shibboleth, stereotype, trite remark, triteness, triviality, truism, vapidity, verbiage
Antonyms: coinage, nuance, original saying

Usage:

1) To hand that power away while mouthing platitudes about a Europe of nations is an insult to our people.
2) Asked about Tax policy, George was only able to mouth platitudes about being in principle in favor of low taxes.
3) I write to my MP and get platitudes back.
4) Our politicians are slowly inching away from the old platitudes, too.
5) He was, justifiably, taken apart by Hugo Young of The Guardian for uttering similar platitudes on Frost.

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Your Words for Today

1. Embark [em-bahrk] (verb)

Meaning: get on transportation object or to begin something

Synonyms:entrain, go aboard ship, launch, leave port,board, commence,

emplane, enter, plunge into, put on board, set about, set out, set sail,

take on board, take ship, start, undertake
Antonyms:disembark, stay

Usage:

1.In November 1915 the regiment embarked for France, real war.

2.On 23rd April, I shall be embarking upon a journey of some 26.2 miles around London.

3.Read this before embarking on a major change that involves a group, business or otherwise.

4.The vast majority of our students go on to university; a few embark directly on a career.

5.Sensing a Government cover-up, he embarks on a quest to uncover the secret of the massacre.

2. Rant [rant] (noun)

Meaning: speak in a loud, angry and forceful way.

Synonyms: tirade, harangue, diatribe, broadside, verbal onslaught, oration, philippic, rhapsody, rhetoric,rodomontade, tirade, vociferation

Antonyms: calm, quiet

Usage:

1. He launched into a rant against the swindler who had duped him.

2. Thought provoking and well argued rant about the lack of attention to basic interoperability in elearning standard implementation.

3. A cool calculated letter is likely to have more impact than a hysterical rant.

4. I just want to rant about how unfair I think the whole situation is.

5. Well it don't actually look like hes playing anything, just ranting on.

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Your words for today

1. Daft [daft, dahft] (adj)

Meaning: Silly; foolish; insane; crazy, scot. merry; playful; frolicsome
Synonyms: absurd, asinine, bedlamite, bonkers, cracked, crackers, daffy, demented, deranged, dopey, flaky*, foolish, fried, giddy, half-baked, idiotic, in the ozone, inane, insane, lunatic, mad, mental*, nuts, nutty, off the wall, out of one's gourd, ridiculous, screwy, silly, simple, touched, unbalanced, unhinged, unsound, wacky, whacko, witless
Antonyms: brainy, bright, intelligent, smart, understanding

Usage:

1. Even though he is quite handsome, he is daft when it comes to talking to girls.

2. In Europe, people behave daftly(adv) when it comes to Soccer.

3. These days, daft ideas can go from the back of the envelope straight into white papers.

4. Either way, it sounds plain daft to me.

5. I remember asking a mate what the song was, and felt pretty daft not knowing!

2. Recalcitrant [ri-kal-si-truhnt] (adj)

Meaning: Refusing to obey authority, custom or regulation; stubbornly defiant; hard to handle or deal wit.

Synonyms: resistant, rebellious, opposed, willful, withstanding, undisciplinable, undisciplined, ungovernable, unmanageable, unruly, untoward

Antonyms: amenable, obedient, passive, accommodating, agreeing, alike, concordant, correspondent, harmonious, homogeneous, like, obliging, similar

Usage:

1. Officers of East India Company were afraid of facing a recalcitrant person like Bhagat Singh or Chandrashekhar Azad.

2. When the company appointed a young post graduate as the head of marketing, most of the older staff started behaving recalcitrantly(adv) with him.

3. If we do not fulfill a child's demands, he may start showing recalcitrancy(noun) towards us.

4. His struggle to accommodate recalcitrant team members resonated with my experiences coaching 25 years of Oxford Boat Race crews.

5. Some recalcitrant states can claim the dubious honor of having failed to ratify either convention.

3. Beatific [bee-uh-tif-ik] (adj)

Meaning: feeling or expressing blissful happiness or joy.

Synonyms: rapturous, joyful, ecstatic, seraphic, blissful, serene, happy, glad, exalted, angelic

Antonyms: miserable, sorrowful, unhappy

Usage:

1. He is a man of great mettle and does not rest until he meets the goal

2. I don't mean apathy really, they just haven't grasped the mettle yet, never mind.

3. The first two days of the strike tested the mettle of both sides.

4. Among the earliest and most curious forms of amusements in Wales, was that of " trying the mettle " of the young men.

5. Some show more mettle in the face of death, while others become paralyzed from fear.

5. Sumptuous [suhmp-choo-uhs] (adj)

Meaning: splendid and expensive looking

Synonyms: lavish, opulent, luxurious, magnificent, resplendent, gorgeous, splendid, rich, expensive, munificent.

Antonyms: humble, plain, cheap, mean, poor, wanting

Usage:

1. More than the sumptuous spread on the table it was the hostess' geniality which was heart-warming.

2. Although the illustrations are very sumptuous, many of them do not add much to the exposition.

3. Return to the boat for a truly sumptuous local lunch.

4. Enjoy your first week of wedded bliss in the sumptuous surroundings of elegant Scottish country house hotels.

5. The presence of two women, with one man, and a rather sumptuous picnic was regarded as scandalous.

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