SAT vocabulary in context
Words in context questions reward reading the clues more than knowing rare words. But in the harder module, several options are words students half-know. This list covers 40 words of the kind that appear in academic passages, with a meaning and an example of each.
The method that matters more than the list
- Cover the options and find the clue: a contrast, a cause, or an explanation after a colon.
- Put your own word in the blank.
- Choose the option closest to your word, then check its precise meaning fits.
See it worked through on the words in context guide.
Words to know
| Word | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ambiguous | open to more than one interpretation | The sign was so ambiguous that drivers could not tell whether parking was allowed. |
| attendant | accompanying; coming along with something else | The new road brought jobs and the attendant traffic. |
| assured | confident | She gave an assured performance despite the late change. |
| candid | frank and honest | His candid letters reveal his doubts. |
| confounding | puzzling; hard to make sense of | The results were confounding until the error was found. |
| contrived | deliberately arranged, often to look natural | The garden's wildness was carefully contrived. |
| corroborate | confirm with further evidence | A second study corroborated the finding. |
| derivative | copied from earlier work; unoriginal | Critics found the sequel derivative. |
| engender | cause or give rise to | Wider roads can engender more traffic. |
| equivocal | deliberately unclear; able to be read two ways | The treaty's equivocal wording satisfied both sides. |
| exacerbate | make worse | The heat exacerbated the drought. |
| forestall | prevent by acting in advance | Early repairs forestalled a collapse. |
| intact | undamaged; unchanged | The original dialogue was left intact. |
| mitigate | make less severe | Trees mitigate the heat of city streets. |
| negligible | too small to matter | The cost was negligible. |
| preclude | rule out; make impossible | The storm precluded any rescue attempt. |
| pronounced | very noticeable | The difference between the samples was pronounced. |
| qualify | limit or add a condition to a statement | She qualified her claim: the effect appears only in dry years. |
| reconcile | make two things consistent | It is hard to reconcile the two accounts. |
| refute | prove false | The new data refute the old theory. |
| seminal | highly influential on later work | Her seminal study shaped the whole field. |
| speculative | based on guesswork rather than evidence | The link is still speculative. |
| substantiate | support with evidence | He could not substantiate the claim. |
| sweeping | wide-ranging, often too broad | One fossil cannot support sweeping conclusions. |
| tenuous | weak; poorly supported | The model rests on a tenuous assumption. |
| tentative | provisional; not certain | They offered a tentative explanation. |
| underscore | emphasise | The results underscore the need for more data. |
| undermine | weaken gradually | The new evidence undermines the drought theory. |
| arbitrate | settle a dispute by judging between the sides | The historian declines to arbitrate between the two sources. |
| anomalous | not fitting the usual pattern | One anomalous reading was checked again. |
| benign | harmless; gentle | The growth turned out to be benign. |
| circumscribe | limit; restrict | Her role was circumscribed by the contract. |
| commensurate | in proportion; matching in size | Pay should be commensurate with experience. |
| discern | notice or recognise, often with effort | It was hard to discern a pattern. |
| disparate | very different; not alike | The two disparate traditions merged. |
| ephemeral | lasting a very short time | Social media trends are often ephemeral. |
| incongruous | out of place; not fitting | A tuxedo looked incongruous at the beach. |
| latent | present but not yet visible or active | Her latent talent emerged in college. |
| pragmatic | practical rather than ideal | The council took a pragmatic approach. |
| provisional | temporary; may change later | The dates are provisional. |
Keep going
Words in context questions · Text structure and purpose · Timed module · All question types
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