VOCABULARY TESTS

Which word or phrase is nearest in meaning to each of the following headwords?

1. Mordant

a) drawing one’s last breath

b) caustic or sarcastic, as in express

c) suggesting an unhealthy mental state

d) pertaining to edible mushrooms having spongy caps

2. Defenestration

a) the act of throwing a person or thing out of a window

b) design and disposition of windows and other exterior openings of a building

c) line of strikers of other demonstrators serving as pickets

d) shell of a submarine

3. Morganatic

a) pertaining to a form of marriage between a man of high rank and a woman of lower

station

b) payably at the end of the year by Wall Street brokers

c) temporarily inactive

d) living in tropical waters

4. Gullet

a) channel through which rain water runs

b) jaw of a large mouthed seabird

c) esophagus, or throat or pharynx

d) the pickoff move of a pitcher to second base

5. Polymath

a) female professor of mathematics

b) person learned in many fields

c) nitwit

d) multicoloured cube

6. Multifoliate

a) in a dying state

b) capable of moving spontaneously

c) motivated

d) having many leaves

7. Anfractuous

a) with both arms in slings

b) near a roadbed on which railroad trackage rests

c) sinuous

d) gloomily or sullenly ill-humored

8. Wizened

a) magical

b) shriveled and dried up, as from age

c) in intense grievous distress

d) swollen (as from a growth in stomach)

9. Unctuous

a) indisputably good

b) hypocritically smooth or suave

c) not subject to conditions

d) greasy

10. Dormer

a) sleeping mouse

b) snout on a polar bear

c) vertical window in a projection built out from a sloping roof

d) weeding night (slang)

11. Chaplet

a) knitted legging worn on each calf by a cowboy

b) cross that towers over a chapel

c) small condominium

d) wreath or garland for the head

12. Crenel

a) hoped underskirt

b) gong

c) mouth of a canon

d) open space between the merlons of a battlement

13. Umbrage

a) shelter from the media, preferably a hideway

b) resentful, displeasure or personal offense

c) shady side of politic

d) money passed under the table in a scene recorded secretly on videotape

14. Procrustean

a) fecund

b) tending to produce conformity by violent or arbitrary means

c) dealing with the rectum and anus

d) pertaining to underside of a sea slug

15. Hobbledehoy

a) donkey work

b) extraordinary size or amount

c) lame child at play

d) awkward, clumsy youth

16. Avatar

a) insatiable greed for riches

b) avoirdupois

c) emobodiment or manifestation, as a principle

d) daydreaming about flying

17. Mulet

a) grass favoured by cows in the Southwest

b) offspring of a male donkey and a mare

c) a fine, especially for a misdemeanor

d) thin, vertical bay, as between windowpanes

18. Threnody

a) group of three

b) sudden, keen excitement

c) song of lamentation

d) great number of persons or things crowded or considered together

19. Shibboleth

a) foaming of the mouth, especially among seekers of political power

b) peculiarity of speech that distinguishes a particular set of persons

c) chief law – enforcement officer in northern African countries

d) wise saying that, because it is indeed true, becomes a cliché

20. Cynic

a) center of attention

b) resident of an island country in the Mediterranean

c) person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions

d) owner of a brothel in Turkey

21. Quintessence

a) combination of five ingredients that makes the perfect aphrodisiac

b) official management of a sovereign’s living quarters

c) the most perfect embodiment of something

d) popular words to describe the five roads that led into Keifent, once China’s capital

22. Capitation

a) transport of prisoners to the guillotine

b) tax levied against each person

c) alcove that leads directly into a governor’s office

d) relationship between the parents of the groom and the parents of a bride

23. Pantheism

a) the belief that wood nymphs dictate weather patterns

b) the belief that the panther is really the king of the jungle

c) critical comment that closed a Broadway drama after one performance

d) philosophical doctrine that identifies GOD with the universe

24. Precursor

a) last word spoken before a child’s first epithet

b) person of thing that precedes, as in a job or a method

c) route between Scylla and Charbdis

d) foreleg of a large dog

25. Sapient

a) dumb

b) wise and discerning

c) silly or foolish

d) derisive

26. Nugatory

a) of no value significance

b) golden

c) obnoxious

d) passing periodically from one region or climate to another, as certain birds

27. Megalomania

a) huge man-made structure

b) one million deaths (a unit of hypothetical casualties in a nuclear war)

c) lengthy account or explanation

d) mental illness marked by delusions of greatness

28. Diffident

a) widely spread of scattered

b) lacking confidence in oneself

c) hard to deal with

d) discursive or wordy

29. Audacious

a) inspiring awe and reverence

b) extremely daring, or insolent

c) factually accurate or reliable

d) severely stern or strict, as in manner

30. Redoubtable

a) to be feared

b) said in protest, objection, or disapproval

c) made more tense

d) mild, compassionate, or forgiving

31. Sanguine

a) cheerful and hopeful

b) like or befitting a saint

c) fearful or nervous

d) capable of being held, maintained, or defended

32. Roseate

a) gullible

b) dissipated, lecherous

c) optimistic or promising

d) shaped roughly

33. To affiance

a) to treasure

b) to oppose

c) to make rich

d) to betroth

34. Artifice

a) expert in pre-Raphaelite colour schemes

b) clever stratagem

c) skating rink without ice

d) award to a tyro watercolourist

35. Malefic

a) with a pastoral subject

b) horrendously seasick

c) meteorlike

d) producing evil\

36. Capidity

a) neck-gland secretion that can cause dwarfism

b) eager or inordinate desire, especially for wealth

c) the most intimate act of love

d) emotion felt by many men on seeing lasciviousness

37. Sedulous

a) preserving

b) upright

c) reversing the direction, as a electrical current

d) metallic

38. Ineffable

a) timid

b) oppressed or coerced

c) inefficient

d) unspeakable

39. Inductive

a) enlisted in U.S armed service

b) seductive

c) supplied through a pipeline

d) pertaining to roundabout logical reasoning

40. Empiricism

a) far-ranging political power

b) royal arrogance

c) doctrine that all knowledge is derived from sense experience

d) acquisition of overseas colonies

41. Mnemonic

a) forming a new word from the initial letters of an organization

b) intended to aid the memory

c) manic depressive

d) living “in the tent of wickedness”

42. Parsimony

a) extreme or excessive frugality

b) estate inherited from one’s father or ancestors

c) jargon

d) garden herb with aromatic leaves used to garnish food

43. Perception

a) example of excellence

b) mental recognition

c) upside-down vision

d) extinction or oblivion

44. Hypothesis

a) two-foot-long needle used to drug, thick-skinned mammals of Africa and India before

transporting them to safe preserves

b) exaggerated position in a college senior’s term paper, to insure a passing grade

c) testable assumption

d) result of having too much sugar in the blood

45. To vulcanize

a) to erupt like clockwork

b) to fizzle in a test tube, then evaporate

c) to treat (rubber) under heat with sulphur to make it more durable

d) to synchronize

46. Euphemism

a) scarcely perceptible difference

b) castrated man especially, formerly one employed by Oriental rulers as a harem attendant

c) exclamation of triumph at a discovery

d) substitution of a mild or vague expression for one thought to be offensive

47. Stygian

a) causing a pink colouration in the eye

b) sewn together

c) dark or gloomy,internal,hellish

d) pertaining to a liquid that polymerizes to a transparent material

48. Cyclopean

a) gigantic, vast (like cyclops, a giant with a single round eye in the middle of the forehead)

b) recurring with regularity

c) exclusive of the nucleus of a cell

d) referring to the machine that helped to decipher the Trojan code before Actium

49. Bastinado

a) a beating with a stick, cudgel, et cetera

b) illegitimate offspring

c) strong woody fiber used in cordage

d) utensil of bamboo

50. To beseech

a) to look sharply

b) to expectorate

c) to catch in or as in a trap

d) to beg or ask eagerly

51. Prophylactic

a) toxic

b) sterile

c) preventive

d) curative

52. Propinquity

a) stinginess

b) nearness

c) searching quality

d) absolute proof

53. Propitiate

a) conform

b) appease

c) influence

d) approach

54. Provender

a) dry food for animals

b) hawker

c) careful person

d) thriftiness

55. Prurient

a) impoverished

b) guiltless

c) prudish

d) lewd

56. Pullulate

a) grasp

b) swarm

c) tug

d) applaud

57. Purblind

a) dazzling

b) lacking understanding

c) incomprehensible

d) conceited

58. Pylon

a) gateway

b) synthetic fabric

c) accumulation

d) asp

59. Quagmire

a) gradual rise

b) large clam

c) bog

d) underbrush

60. Quietus

a) conservatism

b) comfort

c) soft speech

d) release from life

61. Quizzical

a) antiquated

b) puzzling

c) odd

d) ill-tempered

62. Quotidian

a) trite

b) occurring every day

c) word for word

d) apportioning

63. Raucous

a) despairing

b) pugnacious

c) immature

d) harsh-sounding

64. Recrimination

a) counter-accusation

b) double jeopardy

c) flattery

d) needless repetition

65. Redaction

a) conquest

b) submission

c) editing

d) rehearsal

66. Redolent

a) fragrant

b) needy

c) lazy

d) grieving

67. Refection

a) meditation

b) light meal

c) remedy

d) dessert

68. Refulgent

a) brilliant

b) unstable

c) capacious

d) explosive

69. Relegate

a) put in order

b) tie together

c) assign to an inferior position

d) relieve

70. Comprehensible

a) easy to grasp

b) blameworthy

c) deferential

d) returnable

71. Robate

a) sinner

b) deserter

c) stickler for accuracy

d) official in charge of wills

72. Reproof

a) check

b) strengthening

c) demonstration

d) censure

73. Reticulated

a) purchased

b) in a network pattern

c) sewed together

d) drawn together

74. Revulsion

a) change of government

b) a drawing back in disgust

c) backward motion

d) degradation

75. Rhapsodic

a) ecstatic

b) fervent

c) bombastic

d) tightly knit

76. Risible

a) shimmering

b) likely

c) inducing laughter

d) climbable

77. Runnel

a) underground passage

b) race track

c) grain stalk

d) small stream

78. Salacious

a) flavoured

b) briny

c) obscene

d) purchasable

79. Salutatory

a) healthy

b) leaping

c) spies’

d) attacking

80. Salver

a) tray

b) ointment

c) salute

d) rescuer

81. Sartorial

a) costly

b) flashy

c) well-dressed

d) relating to a tailor

82. Scrimshaw

a) carved decorated object

b) gimlet

c) doodling

d) gadget

83. Scurf

a) coarse linen

b) menial attendant

c) rough water

d) dandruff

84. Semantics – study dealing with:

a) earthquakes

b) tides

c) changes in the meaning of words

d) military signals

85. Senescence

a) process of growing blind

b) belief in hereafter

c) rebirth

d) dotage

86. Sequacious

a) preceding

b) following

c) isolated

d) forever questioning

87. Seraglio

a) silk culture

b) mediation

c) fracas

d) harem

88. Serried

a) notched

b) scattered

c) pursued

d) crowded together

89. Sibylline

a) poetic

b) oracular

c) hissing

d) luxurious

90. Simian

a) foolish

b) resembling

c) apelike

d) pertaining to Malaysia

91. Sirocco

a) hot wind

b) contagious disease

c) leather binding

d) style of painting

92. Skittles

a) pretzels

b) ale

c) bowling game

d) trifles

93. Sleazy

a) flimsy

b) disgusting

c) asthmatic

d) slippery

94. Slough

a) marsh

b) bed of coal

c) difficult journey

d) massacre

95. Sluice

a) microscopic section

b) period between two wars

c) multitude

d) artificial water channel

96. Sodality

a) sogginess

b) temperance

c) fellowship

d) saltiness

97. Soporific

a) indiscreet

b) inducing sleep

c) adolescent

d) causing trouble

98. Speleology – study of:

a) caves

b) rhetoric

c) geysers

d) soil conservation

99. Splenetic

a) effusive

b) gorgeous

c) spiteful

d) damaging’

100. Spoliation

a) marring

b) plundering

c) recession

d) embellishing