The 15 GRE Words of the Day
- antagonism (noun) Hostility, conflict, opposition. Witnesses at Columbine high School spoke of a lingering antagonism between nerds and jocks. antagonistic (adjective), antagonize (verb).
- antipathy (noun) A long-held feeling of dislike or aversion. Jazz musicians often have an antipathy for country music. Do country musicians have similar feelings about jazz?
- apprehension (noun) A feeling of fear or foreboding; an arrest. The apprehension was noticiable in the line of students waiting to take the GRE. I was surprised to turn on Cops and see an apprehension of Jim. Why didn’t he get his face fuzzed out? apprehend (verb).
- arabesque (noun) Intricate decorative patterns involving intertwining lines and sometimes incorporating flowers, animals and fruits. The dominant art-form in the middle east has long been caligraphy and due to prosperity in the region, for a long time, everything was inscribed. So you can go through the British Museum and see mosaics covered with arabesque, surrounding religious quotations.
- arbitrary (adjective) Based on random or merely personal preference. the highschool dresscode, which banned camoflague patterns and jeans of certain colors, was widely considered by the students to be fully arbitrary
- archaic (adjective) Old-fashioned, obsolete. For years, macintosh users bragged that their GUI replaced the archaic command-line system used by DOS users. Now they brag about their BSD-based system with it’s terminal windows. archaism (noun).
- ardor (noun) A strong feeling of passion, energy or zeal. The “primative” ardor that Stravinsky poured into Rite of Spring was so strong and unexpected by his contemporaries, that a riot broke out after just the first movement during the first performance. (true story). ardent (adjective)
- arid (adjective) Very dry; boring and meaningless. Visitors to Death Valley are advised to take a few gallons of water apiece so they can survive the arid conditions. Only after everyone listening to me excitely talking about the Hundred Years War fell asleep, did I realize that some might find French military history to be an arid subject. aridity (noun)
- articulate (adjective) To express oneself clearly and effectively. After listening to the republicrats speak, it’s exciting to listen to someone as articulate as Nader and that green guy whose running for govenor who everyone should vote for because he’s soooo much better than Davis or Simon.
- asperity (noun) Harshness, severity. Pelican bay prison is built on the insane idea that the way to lower recidivism rates is to treat the prisoners with asperity, instead of preparing them to return to the community.
- assail (verb) To attack with blows or words. when Ari Fleisher attemtped to state Bush’s war plans, he was assailed by thinking people in the audience. assailant (noun).
- assay (verb) To analyze for particular components; to determine weight, quality, etc We assayed spam and discovered that it does contain meat products, epsecially from the snout region.
- assimilate (verb) To absorb into a system or culture. A goal of Ellis Island was to convince immigrants to Americanize their names and ideas so they would more quickly assimilate into mainstream culture.
- assimilated (adjective) The decendants of Irish immigrants have fully assimilated into mainstream white society, but, because of the legacy of slavery and lingering racism, the decendants of African immigrants have not assimilated to the same degree.
- assuage (verb) To easy, to pacify. Hearing that her brother was fine after surgery did not assuage Katie, only seeing him awake and talking did.
