Voc/Quote

Barron's 1100 Words You Need to Know » Voc/Quote

a	bat, trap
ā	rage, lace
ä	jar, farther
b	bag, sob
ch	chill, such
d	done, said
e	met, rest
ē	ease, see
er	fern, learn
f	feel, stiff
g	gone, big
h	him, hold
i	inch, pin
ī	ivy, hive
j	just, enjoy
k	kin, talk
l	lose, hurl
m	mice, cram
n	not, into
ng	song, ring
o	rot, cot
ō	tow, blow
ô	cord, lord
oi	toil, boil
ou	mouse, bout
p	pest, cap
r	red, art
s	see, best
sh	crush, crash
t	time, act
th	this, math
TH	they, booth
ů	bull, pull
ü	dual, sue
v	vast, have
w	wish, wood
y	youth, yes
z	zoo, zest
zh	pleasure, treasure
ə stands for:	a in around e in waken i in cupid o in demon u in brush

Select the best word from the five choices to fit in the blanks below.

“There are no political ________ except in the imagination of political quacks.” —Francis Parkman
- a. compounds
- b. panaceas
- c. milieus
- d. ethics
- e. diatribes
“The effect of my ________ is that always busy with the preliminaries and antecedents, I am never able to begin the produce.”—Henri Amiel
- a. genre
- b. expedient
- c. iniquity
- d. bias
- e. prognostication
“Once philosophers have written their principal works, they not infrequently simply become their own ________ .” —Theodore Haecker
- a. accomplices
- b. disciples
- c. cynics
- d. arbiters
- e. badgers
“I hate the aesthetic game of the eye and the mind, played by those ________ who ‘appreciate’ beauty.” —Pablo Picasso
- a. connoisseurs
- b. charlatans
- c. rustics
- d. stentorian
- e. paragons
“Anglo-Saxon ________ takes such very good care that its prophecies of woe to the erring person shall find fulfillment.” —George Gissing
- a. foreboding
- b. morality
- c. protocol
- d. polemic
- e. guile
“The universe is not friendly to ________ and they all perish sooner or later.” —Don Marquis
- a. icons
- b. patriarchs
- c. despots
- d. insurgents
- e. perennials
“________ means influence.” —Jack London
- a. Affluence
- b. Cupidity
- c. Complicity
- d. Decorum
- e. Proximity
“No one wants advice—only ________ .” —John Steinbeck
- a. corroboration
- b. alacrity
- c. delineation
- d. dissent
- e. jurisdiction
“If by the time we’re sixty, we haven’t learned what a knot of ________ and contradiction life is, we haven’t grown old to much purpose.” —John Cowper Powys
- a. vertigo
- b. surmise
- c. sophistry
- d. privation
- e. paradox
“The concept of ‘Momism’ is male nonsense. It is the refuge of a man seeking excuses for his own lack of ________ .” —Pearl Buck
- a. regimen
- b. virility
- c. grandeur
- d. temerity
- e. satiety
“________ is the dabbling within a serious field by persons who are ill equipped to meet even the minimum standards of that field, or study, or practice.” —Ben Shahn
- a. Amnesty
- b. Artifice
- c. Decadence
- d. Propriety
- e. Dilettantism
“Accustomed to the ________ of noise, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.” —John Lahr
- a. realm
- b. veneer
- c. surfeit
- d. diatribe
- e. cacophony
“In almost every act of our lives we are so clothed in ________ and dissemblance that we can recognize but dimly the deep primal impulses that motivate us.” —James Ramsey Ullman
- a. volition
- b. rationalization
- c. sophistry
- d. impunity
- e. heresy
“When men talk honestly about themselves, one of the themes that crops up is a ________ for the old days, at least for an idealized version of them.” —Myron Brenton
- a. pretext
- b. landmark
- c. nostalgia
- d. fetish
- e. candor
“We love a congenial ________ because by sympathy we can and do expand our spirit to the measure of his.” —Charles H. Cooley
- a. egotist
- b. nonentity
- c. iconclast
- d. ascetic
- e. disciple
“Man is certainly a ________ animal. A never sees B in distress without thinking C ought to relieve him directly.” —Sydney Smith
- a. discreet
- b. benevolent
- c. banal
- d. whimsical
- e. somber
“I cannot tolerate ________ . They are all so obstinate, so opinionated.” —Joseph McCarthy
- a. arbiters
- b. culprits
- c. dregs
- d. expatriates
- e. bigots
“We look upon ________ as degrading. Our mothers’ voices still ring in our ears: ‘Have you done your homework?’” —Wilhelm Stekhel
- a. indolence
- b. opulence
- c. levity
- d. invective
- e. histrionics
“By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is ________ —indifference from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits.” —Sir William Osler
- a. umbrage
- b. apathy
- c. repose
- d. nepotism
- e. histrionics
“One who sees the ________ everywhere has occasion to remember it pretty often.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes
- a. inevitable
- b. precedent
- c. efficacy
- d. idyllic
- e. mundane
“There’s life for a ________ in the characters he plays. It’s such a beautiful physical escape. I enjoy the transformation of personality.” —Sir John Gielgud
- a. thespian
- b. miscreant
- c. termagant
- d. tyro
- e. sage
“The writing of a biography is no ________ task; it is the strenuous achievement of a lifetime, only to be accomplished in the face of endless obstacles.” —Havelock Ellis
- a. paltry
- b. facile
- c. lucrative
- d. impious
- e. egregious
“Cleanliness, said some ________ man, is next to godliness. It may be, but how it came to sit so near is the marvel.” —Charles Lamb
- a. abstemious
- b. banal
- c. comely
- d. sage
- e. devout
“I should like most candid friends to be anonymous. They would then be saved the painful necessity of making themselves ________ .” —J. A. Spender
- a. venial
- b. odious
- c. sanctimonious
- d. fractious
- e. benevolent
“A stricken tree is beautiful, so dignified, so admirable in its ________ longevity; it is, next to man, the most touching of wounded objects.” —Edna Ferber
- a. rash
- b. vulnerable
- c. potential
- d. singular
- e. omnipotent
“Grandparents are frequently more ________ with their grandchildren than with their children. A grandparent cannot run with his son but can totter with his grandson.” —Andre Maurois
- a. raucous
- b. congenial
- c. sedate
- d. tenacious
- e. vexatious
“It is unjust to the child to be born and reared as the ‘creation’ of the parents. He is himself, and it is within reason that he may be the very ________ of them both.” —Ruth Benedict
- a. veneer
- b. requisite
- c. antithesis
- d. profuse
- e. anathema
“This, indeed, is one of the eternal ________ of both life and literature—that without passion little gets done; yet without control of that passion, its effects are largely ill or null.” —F. L. Lucas
- a. trends
- b. subterfuges
- c. harbingers
- d. fiats
- e. paradoxes
“What has maintained the human race if not faith in new possibilities and courage to ________ them.” —Jane Addams
- a. divulge
- b. flout
- c. advocate
- d. initiate
- e. mandate
“No sooner do we take steps out of our customary routine than a strange world ________ about us.” —J. B. Priestly
- a. surges
- b. wanes
- c. recants
- d. juxtaposes
- e. galvanizes
“As the two ________ cultures began to mingle, they encountered some revealing and shocking truths.” —Nelson DeMille
- a. venerable
- b. transient
- c. sedentary
- d. disparate
- e. servile
“Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so mired in ________ .” —Bertrand Russell
- a. futility
- b. vituperation
- c. subterfuge
- d. foment
- e. iniquity
“Most quarrels are ________ at the time, incredible afterwards.” —E. M. Forster
- a. rash
- b. salient
- c. trenchant
- d. inevitable
- e. whimsical
“We live at the mercy of a ________ word. A sound, a mere disturbance of the air sinks into our very soul sometimes.” —Joseph Conrad
- a. reviled
- b. malevolent
- c. vexatious
- d. innocuous
- e. evanescent
“There must be some good in the cocktail party to account for its immense ________ among otherwise sane people.” —Evelyn Waugh
- a. vogue
- b. cupidity
- c. calumny
- d. audacity
- e. asperity
“One drifting yellow leaf on a windowsill can be a city dweller’s fall, ________ and melancholy as any hillside in New England.” —E. B. White
- a. somber
- b. cryptic
- c. pungent
- d. aloof
- e. doleful
“For generations of German plutocrats, duelling was a bastion against weakness, effeminacy, and ________ .” —Arthur Krystal
- a. redress
- b. sophistry
- c. decadence
- d. temerity
- e. vituperation
“No one weeps more ________ than the hardened scoundrel as was proved when a sentimental play was performed before an audience of gangsters whose eyes were seen to be red and swollen.” —Hesketh Pearson
- a. copiously
- b. vapidly
- c. raucously
- d. nominally
- e. laudably
“My greatest problem is my dislike of ________ , of battle. I do not like wrestling matches or arguments. I seek harmony. If it is not there, I move away.” —Anais Nin
- a. artifice
- b. avarice
- c. celerity
- d. belligerence
- e. diversity
“The only agreeable existence is one of idleness, and that is not, unfortunately, always ________ with continuing to exist at all.” —Rose Macauley
- a. bogus
- b. compatible
- c. culpable
- d. felicitous
- e. inviolable
“Diaries are sometimes meant to be a ________ record of one’s daily waking hours. Sometimes they are an unconscious relief from the day’s tensions.” —Edna Ferber
- a. zealous
- b. tacit
- c. terse
- d. supine
- e. prudent
“Was there ever a wider and more loving conspiracy than that which keeps the ________ figure of Santa Claus from slipping away into the forsaken wonderland of the past?” —Hamilton Mabie
- a. vigilant
- b. venerable
- c. sedate
- d. frenetic
- e. factitious
“For him who has no concentration, there is no ________ .” —Bhagavad Gita
- a. tranquility
- b. respite
- c. solace
- d. equanimity
- e. humility
“Real excellence and ________ are not incompatible; on the contrary, they are twin sisters.” —Jean Lacordiare
- a. potential
- b. inhibition
- c. propinquity
- d. equanimity
- e. humility
“Children are cunning enough behind their innocent faces, though ________ might be a kinder word to describe them.” —Nan Fairbrother
- a. recondite
- b. prudent
- c. fatuous
- d. incisive
- e. inexorable
“It is not easy to ________ of anything that has given us truer insight.” —John Spalding
- a. repent
- b. rue
- c. recant
- d. eschew
- e. cant
“There is no diplomacy like ________ . You may lose by it now and then, but it will be a loss well gained if you do. Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception.” —E. V. Lucas
- a. hyperbole
- b. chicanery
- c. serenity
- d. candor
- e. opprobrium
“In America I was constantly being introduced to ________ persons by people who were unmistakably superior to those notables and most modestly unaware of it.” —John Ayscough
- a. eminent
- b. ostentatious
- c. mendacious
- d. intrepid
- e. garrulous
“It is because nature made me a ________ man, going hither and thither for conversation that I love proud and lonely things.” —W. B. Yeats
- a. magnanimous
- b. fastidious
- c. doleful
- d. banal
- e. gregarious
“My greatest problem here, in a ________-loving America, is my dislike of polemics, of belligerence, of battle.” —Anais Nin
- a. docile
- b. polemic
- c. fastidious
- d. implacable
- e. nebulous

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Essential Words for the TOEFL (7th edition)

What vocabulary is necessary to score high on the TOEFL? Why is it especially important to have a strong vocabulary for the current TOEFL? Why must I improve my vocabulary and how can I succeed? How can I be a better TOEFL test taker?

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