Every GRE student has this question in mind: How to improve the vocabulary for the verbal section? Now I have already recommended a couple of good GRE word lists that contain nearly all the words that you would see on the GRE test day. But as I always say that one must not only learn words from lists. If you really want to improve your GRE verbal score, you must understand these words in context since GRE does not only test words – GRE tests their usage.
Therefore starting from this week, I will be posting a few articles for GRE preparation that I have read and culled from various online sources. These articles contain frequent words that are tested on the GRE exam.
Here are 6 articles with difficult GRE vocabulary (nearly 150 words in total). However, I have not chosen difficult articles for this part since I want you to focus more on building sound vocabulary and understanding the basic structure of these sentences. In next parts, I’ll try to choose a couple of hard GRE type articles which will not only have a convoluted structure, but they will also contain lots of arcane vocabulary.
This is a 4-page review of the successful novel “The Great Gatsby”. The sentence structure of this article is easy to understand as per GRE standards but it contains tons of GRE words. I will advise you to not look up for the meanings of the words initially. Try to extract the meaning from the context and then validate it from an online dictionary.
GRE Words in this article
frivolity
lurid
obscurity
impregnable
melodramatic
daunting
aphoristic
benign
profligacy
excursion
bespoke
fidelity
undefiled
plausible
conflates
ingrained
transitory
enchanted
aesthetic
contemplation
commensurate
This is a small piece that was published in the Guardian. It is written by Jay McInerney and it talks about the 1936 interview of Scott Fitzgerald (author of The Great Gatsby) with the New York Post. This was not a pleasant interview for Fitzgerald. In typical Post style, the interview revealed a desperate, restless Fitzgerald, wandering and shaking with alcoholism.
GRE Words in this article
hatchet
nuanced
cloddish
gaudy
binge
flamboyant
indelible
retrospect
epitaph
prescient
flapper
fleeting
expatriate
giddy
proletariat
apocryphal
poignant
depantsing
intertwined
unseemly
This is a 6-page piece by Zadie Smith and talks about the small and big sources of pleasure in life. The article ends on a great note by saying that the end of a pleasure can always be replaced with another of more or less equal worth. As I have done for this post, this article is also easier to understand for a beginner level. But intense on GRE level vocabulary.
GRE Words in this article
discernment
gratitude
stilled
freckles
sashaying
gawker
gnarly
cavernous
fray
despairing
inebriation
mimicked
sublimity
jester
synapses
twanged
tedious
prosaic
fizzled
arduous
finitude
Those of you who have watched the movie “The Social Network”, based on Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, will enjoy this. This article is a review, written by Zadie Smith, on this movie and it contains copious GRE words.
GRE Words in this article
ambiguities
regatta
pedantic
cynical
surmises
spurned
deposition
discreet
rucksack
eerie
countenance
imploring
ravishing
knack
hyperreality
paranoia
shimmies
lacquered
indifference
accrue
phony
patently
notorious
stab
berated
dispassionate
ingenious
articulate
affectless
disjunct
stoic
blandness
disingenuous
onerous
ubiquitous
stumped
denuded
protagonist
obsolete
Written by Jessica Gross, this 5-page article critiques a book by data journalist Ben Blatt. In his new book, “Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve”, Blatt examines the stylistic fingerprints of writers, whether Americans are “louder” than Brits in their writing, the differences between how men and women write, whether books are getting simpler, and many other curiosities.
GRE Words in this article
gambit
penchant
intrigue
imprudence
inquest
cliches
conjecture
Alexander Woollcott and Harpo Marx: A Love Story
Published on longreads and written by Ned Stuckey, this is a lengthy 8-page story that takes a closer look at the dynamics of a friendship, and the roles we play in each other’s lives. It is based on “Alexander Woollcott and Harpo Marx: A Love Story,” by Ned Stuckey-French. It contains tens of GRE words and other hard vocabulary.
GRE Words in this article
doldrums
thwart
wrangled
exasperating
pudgy
fastidious
dandy
unrequited
quintessential
nostalgia
aficionado
melancholy
appalled
chagrin
escapades
pretentious
putrid
entrenched
effeminate
consummated
partaken
neurotic
circuitous
infantile
heebiejeebies
succinctly
yapping
romping
ingenuity
ungenteel
snobbery
doubleentendre
innuendo
emendation