GRE Vocabulary Flashcards
This is a free 20-card deck of words that turn up again and again in GRE-style reading passages and fill-in-the-blank questions. The front of each card shows one word. The back gives a plain meaning, a sentence that shows it in use, and a short hook to help it stick.
Tap the card to reveal the answer
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All 20 cards in this deck
The full deck is listed below, front and back. Answers stay collapsed until you open them, so you can quiz yourself as you scroll.
1. alacrity
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Cheerful speed and eagerness. Example: She accepted the extra project with alacrity, and had a plan ready the same day. Hook: alacrity and alert both suggest being ready to go.
2. ameliorate
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To make a bad situation better, without necessarily fixing it. Example: New drainage did ameliorate the flooding, though the street still gets wet in storms. Hook: it comes from Latin melior, better.
3. assuage
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To ease pain, worry or anger. Example: The apology did little to assuage her disappointment. Hook: it comes from Latin suavis, sweet, so it sweetens the sting.
4. mitigate
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To make something less severe or harmful. Example: Sandbags helped mitigate the damage from the river. Hook: mitigate softens consequences, while assuage softens feelings.
5. ascetic
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Living with strict self-denial, often for spiritual reasons. Example: He led an ascetic life, with one meal a day and no furniture but a mat. Hook: ascetic and austere both describe a plain, strict life.
6. capricious
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Changing suddenly and without a clear reason. Example: The capricious manager approved the plan on Monday and rejected it on Tuesday. Hook: a capricious person is like the weather.
7. censure
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To criticize formally and severely. Also a noun: strong official disapproval. Example: The committee voted to censure the senator for the remark. Do not confuse it with censor, which means to cut material out.
8. cogent
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Clear, logical and convincing, usually of an argument. Example: Her cogent reply left the critics with nothing to add. Hook: cogent arguments force you to agree.
9. corroborate
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To confirm with additional evidence. Example: A second witness corroborated her account. Hook: the root is the one in robust, which means strong.
10. diffident
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Shy and lacking self-confidence, especially in speaking up. Example: A diffident speaker, he rarely offered an opinion in meetings. Do not mix it up with indifferent, which means uninterested.
11. enervate
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To weaken or drain of energy. Example: The heat and humidity enervated the hikers by noon. False friend: it does not mean to energize, even though it looks like it.
12. ephemeral
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Lasting a very short time. Example: Fame on the internet can be ephemeral, gone within a week. Hook: think of a mayfly, which lives about a day.
13. equivocal
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Open to more than one meaning, often on purpose to avoid commitment. Example: The mayor gave an equivocal answer and never said yes or no. Hook: equi- and voc-: two voices at once.
14. esoteric
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Understood by only a small group of specialists. Example: The lecture was so esoteric that even other physicists struggled to follow. Hook: esoteric is the opposite of mainstream.
15. garrulous
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Talking a lot, especially about unimportant things. Example: The garrulous neighbor could turn a five-minute hello into an hour. Contrast: laconic.
16. laconic
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Using very few words. Example: Asked how the trip went, he gave a laconic answer: fine. Hook: the word comes from Laconia, the region around Sparta, whose people were known for short replies.
17. obdurate
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Stubbornly refusing to change one's mind or feelings. Example: The obdurate board ignored every request to reconsider. Hook: the root dur- means hard, as in durable, so obdurate means hard to move.
18. perfunctory
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Done quickly and with little care, only as a duty. Example: He gave the report a perfunctory glance before signing it. Hook: a perfunctory act is just going through the motions.
19. recalcitrant
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Stubbornly resisting authority or control. Example: The recalcitrant student refused every instruction. Hook: it comes from a Latin word for kicking back, like a mule.
20. spurious
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False or not genuine, though it may look real. Example: The study found a spurious link between ice cream sales and drowning, since both rise in summer. Hook: spurious claims fool you at first glance.
How vocabulary shows up on the GRE
Vocabulary matters on the Verbal Reasoning section of the GRE, mostly in text completion and sentence equivalence questions, where you pick the word or words that fit a sentence, and inside reading passages, where one unknown word can hide the author's tone. The test favors words with shades of meaning. It is less about rare words nobody uses and more about telling apart words that sound alike, such as one that means to lessen and one that means to remove. Check the current question types and timing on the ETS website, since the format can change.
Two habits beat memorizing long lists. First, learn each word through a sentence, so you remember how it behaves and not only what it means. Second, group words by idea: words for stubborn, words for talkative, words for brief, words for easing pain. Once you have the group, you only need the small difference between its members.
How to use this deck
Go through all 20 cards once without stopping, and say the meaning out loud before you flip. Then try to use each word in a sentence of your own about something real in your life. A word you can use is a word you can recognize under time pressure.
On the second pass, sort the cards you missed into groups of two or three similar words and compare them. Words like mitigate, assuage and ameliorate are close, but not identical. Write one line about what separates each pair. Finally, watch the false friends: enervate means to weaken, not to energize, and cogent is about a convincing argument, not about being clear in general.
How StudyPDF builds decks from your own word lists
Twenty cards are a start. A real GRE plan needs hundreds of words, and the ones you actually miss are not the ones in a generic deck.
Upload your own word list, a prep book chapter or your reading notes to StudyPDF, press New material and pick flashcards, and the deck is built from that exact material. You do not have to upload anything to start: you can also just name a topic, like words about argument or tone, and Bo sets it up with its key concepts, so you can build a deck on it. Every card points back to the page it came from. Starting is free.
Written by the StudyPDF team. Last updated 2026-08-19.