WORD OF THE DAY
If you like Edgar Allan Poe and "The Addams Family," you have a taste for mordant entertainment — that is, anything particularly grim or dark in nature.
The original meaning of mordant (which comes from the Latin word modere, meaning "to bite or sting,") was that of a physical substance that literally bit into something, such as the one used to set dye into fabrics, or etch lines into a copper plate. Now, mordant generally refers to a dark or biting artistic style, sense of humor, or psychological outlook.
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Vocabulary lists containing mordant
The top 1,000 vocabulary words have been carefully chosen to represent difficult but common words that appear in everyday academic and business writing. These words are also the most likely to appear on the SAT, ACT, GRE, and ToEFL. To create this list, we started with the words that give our users the most trouble and then ranked them by how frequently they appear in our corpus of billions of words from edited sources. If you only have time to study one list of words, this is the list.
On the New SAT, all of the Reading Test questions are multiple choice and are based on reading passages that may be taken from literature, science, the social sciences, or a US founding document (or a text inspired by such a document). Many of the reading comprehension questions meant to assess a student’s understanding of those passages will require students to choose words that best describe the writer’s tone or point of view, words like the 200 words you see on this list. Learn them here so when you see them in an SAT answer choice, you’ll know what they mean! Here are all of our word lists to help you prepare for the new SAT (debuting March of 2016): The Language of the Test, Multiple-Meaning Words, and Words to Capture Tone.
On the SAT, all of the Reading Test questions are multiple choice and are based on reading passages that may be taken from literature, science, the social sciences, or a U.S. founding document (or a text inspired by such a document). Many of the reading comprehension questions meant to assess a student’s understanding of those passages will require students to choose words that best describe the writer’s tone or point of view, words like the 25 words you see on this list. Learn them here so when you see them in an SAT answer choice, you’ll know what they mean! Following our Roadmap to the SAT? Head back to see what else you should be learning this week.
On the ACT Reading Test, you will almost certainly encounter questions that ask about an author's tone — that is, the author's attitude toward their subject matter. Master our comprehensive collection of common words used to describe an author's tone, and you'll be well prepared to tackle these questions.
On the SAT, all of the Reading Test questions are multiple choice and are based on reading passages that may be taken from literature, science, the social sciences, or a U.S. founding document (or a text inspired by such a document). Many of the reading comprehension questions meant to assess a student’s understanding of those passages will require students to choose words that best describe the writer’s tone or point of view, words like the ones you see on this list. Learn them here so when you see them in an SAT answer choice, you’ll know what they mean!
