The GRE Verbal Reasoning Test: Intermediate Words: Intermediate, List 2

This list of intermediate words features a mixture of easier and more difficult words that you may be less familiar with. Study these words and watch your GRE score grow.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. amalgamate
    bring or combine together or with something else
    But we are still left with the question of how small, simple societies actually evolve or amalgamate into large, complex ones.Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
  2. convex
    curving or bulging outward
    All Woolly rhino images consistently show a massively deep, hugely convex shoulder hump that extends all the way forward to the back of the head.Scientific American (Nov 9, 2013)
  3. discrepancy
    a difference between conflicting facts or claims or opinions
    And the documents revealed a vast discrepancy between what government officials had been saying publicly and what they knew to be true.Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War
  4. dissident
    a person who objects to some established policy
    Rebels—active fighters and dissidents—were viewed as a threat, and an undetermined number were deported as indentured laborers to the West Indies to work on sugar plantations.Scientific American (Mar 17, 2019)
  5. efficacious
    producing or capable of producing an intended result
    By analyzing the time to an infection after a person received the monoclonals, the scientists found that the high dose was 88% efficacious in preventing infection and the low dose 75% efficacious, compared to placebo.Science Magazine (Oct 31, 2022)
  6. emaciated
    very thin especially from disease or hunger or cold
    Inside the overcrowded barracks, starving prisoners lay crammed together on the platforms, their eyes glazed over, their emaciated bodies barely able to move.Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps
  7. enunciate
    express or state clearly
    They had lost the ability to enunciate words but could still mimic a range of human vocal sounds, from a child's high-pitched warble to a man's deep tones.The Hunger Games
  8. equanimity
    steadiness of mind under stress
    He was not angry, not even irritated, and he enjoyed his equanimity.Song of Solomon
  9. etymology
    a history of a word
    The etymology of “person” traces back to the Latin persona, meaning mask, especially the type worn by actors or those playing social roles.New York Times (Jul 28, 2013)
  10. facetious
    cleverly amusing in tone
    Also, I know I was being facetious about that whole musk thistle thing, but hiking with them does sound fun.From Twinkle, with Love
  11. fauna
    all the animal life in a particular region or period
    Although the wildlife trade is a major threat to the planet’s fauna, regulation and public attention tends to focus primarily on well-known, charismatic animals, such as elephants, parrots and sea turtles.New York Times (May 19, 2022)
  12. homogeneous
    all of the same or similar kind or nature
    Despite the fact that the universe is so uniform and homogeneous on a large scale, it contains local irregularities, such as stars and galaxies.A Brief History of Time: And Other Essays
  13. immutable
    not subject or susceptible to change or variation
    It is the fixity of its text that makes it an immutable mobile, and it is immutable mobiles that are needed if facts are to endure into the post-print age.The Invention of Science
  14. lustrous
    brilliant
    Her eyes were lustrous gold, like the copper and bronze disks inside Festus’s mechanical head.The Mark of Athena
  15. obsequious
    attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery
    Sitting across a desk from the famous and powerful, he was friendly but not fawning, interested but never obsequious.Los Angeles Times (Jan 23, 2021)
  16. piquant
    having an agreeably pungent taste
    Fermented shrimp paste, or belacan, typically dehydrated and packaged as a compact cake, is a key ingredient in many of Malaysia's slew of piquant dishes.Salon (Mar 10, 2021)
  17. sobriety
    a manner that is serious and solemn
    “I don’t buy eggs in Malta,” he confessed, with an air of slight and clandestine amusement that was the only departure from industrious sobriety Yossarian had ever seen him make.Catch-22
  18. taciturn
    habitually reserved and uncommunicative
    But after dinner Estraven grew taciturn, and cut my talk off short.The Left Hand of Darkness
  19. travail
    use of physical or mental energy; hard work
    They couldn’t understand that the sort of meal they took for granted, a thirty-minute production in the land of General Electric, translated here to a lifetime of travail.The Poisonwood Bible
  20. vaunt
    show off
    He vaunts aloud that “his blacks” in South Africa are well fed and materially better off under the chains of apartheid than their liberated brothers and sisters in the rest of Africa.Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography
Created on November 30, 2022 (updated January 12, 2023)

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