The GRE Verbal Reasoning Test: Challenge Words: Challenge, List 7

This list of challenge words features some of the hardest words that you will encounter in the Verbal Reasoning section of the GRE. These are words that typically appear less frequently across different academic disciplines, so you are less likely to have encountered them before. Master these difficult words and watch your GRE score soar!
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. abscission
    the act of cutting something off
    From M. Guizot Val Richer, March 4th.—Your sad predictions were well founded; the painful abscission has been made; we bore it at least with good sense and dignity. Laughton, John Knox
  2. accretion
    an increase by natural growth or addition
    Two wings had been added to accommodate the yearly accretions of Marine children who came into town as Ravenel Air Base expanded. The Great Santini
  3. anodyne
    a medicine used to relieve pain
    They provided us deep pleasure, an anodyne to the squalor and clutter of the street. Black Like Me
  4. atavism
    a reappearance of an earlier characteristic
    They think illiberal authoritarianism — “made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science,” to quote Winston Churchill — is the wave of the future, not an atavism from the past. Seattle Times (Dec 10, 2021)
  5. cantankerous
    having a difficult and contrary disposition
    Both artists, difficult personalities to begin with, were becoming more cantankerous with age and failing health. New York Times (May 29, 2014)
  6. chicanery
    the use of tricks to deceive someone
    Phenomena that Western culture classifies as chicanery or nonsense, like magic arts, voodoo, and sorcery, are considered normal in other cultures. Salon (Jan 4, 2014)
  7. demotic
    of or for the common people
    His street photography of the early 1960s consists of fluent, if unexceptional, shots of a demotic New York: passengers on a ferry, apartment dwellers sitting in window sills, a painted sign for a Spanish-language church. New York Times (Sep 3, 2015)
  8. diaphanous
    so thin as to transmit light
    Her palm was pale, almost diaphanous, and he could see the greenish criss-cross of her veins. Americanah
  9. disabuse
    free somebody from an erroneous belief
    I was full of misery at my lie, but I found I could not disabuse him of it—I could conjure no words sufficient. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves
  10. factotum
    a servant employed to do a variety of jobs
    Your new phone, like your old one, will become your constant companion and trusty factotum—your teacher, secretary, confessor, guru. Wall Street Journal (Oct 6, 2017)
  11. impecunious
    not having enough money to pay for necessities
    Japanese war crimes victims agitated for compensation; Third World governments begged for overseas development aid; foreign shysters and conmen offered an exotic panoply of dud investments; impecunious American universities pressed for endowments. Forbes (Apr 1, 2015)
  12. internecine
    characterized by bloodshed and carnage for both sides
    He reports from an ant battlefield near San Diego where supercolonies of Argentine ants clash in internecine warfare that leaves an estimated 30 million dead every year, a casualty a second. New York Times (Jun 10, 2010)
  13. labile
    liable to change
    He’s reactive rather than active, a labile, intensely emotional man who is shredded by his own inability to discern what’s real. The New Yorker (May 29, 2017)
  14. olfactory
    of or relating to the sense of smell
    It came to my olfactory sense, full and fresh, overwhelming: the smell of vegetation. Life of Pi
  15. ornithologist
    a zoologist who studies feathered animals
    The ornithologist David Sibley says that in Cape May, New Jersey, he once spotted a bird in flight from two hundred yards away and knew, instantly, that it was a ruff, a rare sandpiper. Blink
  16. plutocracy
    a political system governed by the wealthy people
    But that doesn't stop him from chasing "the green light" of wealth and status, the dangled promise of power that can only create a corrupt plutocracy shored up by vast social inequality. The Guardian (May 3, 2013)
  17. reprise
    repeat, renew, or resume some action
    Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe touts this summer’s Games as a springboard to reprising Japan’s 1960s boom, but the nation 56 years on is very different. Reuters (Feb 5, 2020)
  18. salubrious
    promoting health
    In general, people who take up one healthy habit, such as working out, tend to practice other salubrious habits, a phenomenon known as habit clustering. New York Times (Dec 22, 2021)
  19. Stygian
    dark and dismal as of the river in Hades
    Crossing a walled river of Stygian sludge, we entered a district of factories and workhouses, of smokestacks belching black stuff into the sky, and this is where we found Wakeling Street. Hollow City
  20. timbre
    the distinctive property of a complex sound
    They hear the movement of pitches, the content of rhythms, the movement of meter, and explore the timbre of whatever instrument or voice with which they have access. Music and the Child
Created on Wed Nov 30 17:42:52 EST 2022 (updated Thu Jan 12 15:34:14 EST 2023)

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