Gre verbal section 8 pps

19. PAPER : ORIGAMI
a. china : fragile
b. syllabus : opus
c. licorice : fennel
d. lotion : emollient
e. osier : baskets
20. MACHIAVELLIAN : DUPLICITOUS
a. Faustian : pleasant
b. Orwellian : intrusive
c. Dickensian : palling
d. Emersonian : dispiriting
e. Proustian : succinct
– THE GRE VERBAL SECTION–
125
Antonyms
Instructions: In each of the following questions, you will be presented with a capitalized word followed by
five answer choices lettered a
—
e. Select the answer word or phrase that has a meaning most nearly opposite to
the initial word.
Some of these questions will require you to discriminate among closely related word choices. Be sure
you choose the answer that is most nearly opposed to the capitalized word.
1. AMBIVALENT :
a. insecure
b. inconstant
c. positive
d. cheerful
e. insatiable
2. CATASTROPHIC :
a. bold
b. pleasurable

c. salubrious
d. nihilistic
e. beneficial
3. PALATIAL :
a. chintzy
b. feudal
c. democratic
d. decorous
e. subterranean
4. OMNISCIENT :
a. resonant
b. mutable
c. ignorant
d. superstitious
e. phlegmatic
5. CAPITULATE :
a. embolden
b. simplify
c. assuage
d. persevere
e. postulate
6. INDEMNIFY :
a. call for assistance
b. put at risk
c. cause to collapse
d. resist attack
e. protect from harm
7. PALLIATE :
a. accumulate
b. exaggerate

c. aggravate
d. extirpate
e. misconstrue
8. SYCOPHANTIC :
a. flattering
b. empathetic
c. self-serving
d. self-sufficient
e. selfless
9. OUST :
a. veer
b. ensconce
c. pacify
d. purge
e. enslave
10. ANOMALOUS :
a. abnormal
b. confident
c. reserved
d. ordinary
e. careless
11. BRUSQUE :
a. courteous
b. diffident
c. rancorous
d. jaunty
e. timely
12. AUDACIOUS :
a. defiant
b. daring

c. timid
d. simple
e. possible
13. PALPABLE :
a. without substance
b. in lieu of
c. easily deceived
d. not forceful
e. damaging
14. STAID :
a. serious
b. weak
c. climactic
d. solipsistic
e. frivolous
15. LOQUACIOUS :
a. meddlesome
b.
productive
c. vivacious
d. taciturn
e. piddling
16. PROTRACTED :
a. abridged
b. circumvented
c. excessive
d. tangential
e. monumental
17. OBLIQUE :
a. hearty

b. direct
c. careful
d. superlative
e. insightful
18. DOLOROUS :
a. passive
b. fickle
c. cheerful
d. sincere
e. incredulous
– THE GRE VERBAL SECTION–
126
19. MUTABLE :
a. fatuous
b. confusing
c. changeable
d. elemental
e. constant
20. SUPERFLUOUS :
a. insouciant
b. genteel
c. essential
d. obtuse
e. undeserved
– THE GRE VERBAL SECTION–
127
Sentence Completion
Instructions: Each of the following sentences contains either one or two blanks. Below each question are
answer choices lettered a
—

e. Select the lettered choice that best completes the sentence, bearing in mind its
intended meaning.
1. Chemical fingerprints of space debris that has
impacted the moon are similar to those found
in meteorites that have struck the earth, prov-
ing that ____________ and ____________
impacts derived from analogous sources.
a. common…extraordinary
b. lunar…terrestrial
c. possibility…intergalactic
d. dangerous…simultaneous
e. interstellar…other
2. The truth is the truth; neither childish absurdi-
ties, nor ____________ contradictions, can
make it otherwise.
a. unscrupulous
b. true
c. possible
d. certain
e. unseemly
3. Humans are necessarily social creatures, for
whom ____________ is a matter of survival;
however, as discrete entities, we often keenly
experience yearnings for solitude.
a. sustenance
b. entertainment
c. alienation
d. encouragement
e. collectivity
4. The wayfarer, with no companion but his staff,

paused to exchange a word with the innkeeper,
that the sense of ____________ might not
utterly overwhelm him before he could reach
the first house in the valley.
a. fatigue
b. rancor
c. insufficiency
d. loneliness
e. miscalculation
5. In the twentieth century, artists found them-
selves unshackled from the necessity to faith-
fully reproduce appearances; and they used
their liberation to develop a purely
_____________ purpose in their
_____________.
a. transparent…assertions
b. commercial…idolatry
c. aesthetic…oeuvres
d. benign…portfolios
e. casual…attire
6. One theory of ancient human migration
patterns holds that ____________ originated
in Africa more than 100,000 years ago and
from thence ____________ the remainder of
the world.
a. music…enchanted
b. culture…freed
c. savannahs…dotted
d. glaciers…covered
e. Homo sapiens…colonized

7. To the writings of the alchemists were almost
certainly added spurious elements, which
compounded the difficulty of deciphering the
____________ from the ____________ in an
already disconcerting amalgam of fact and
allegory.
a. genuine…apocryphal
b. gold…silver
c. Latin…Greek
d. witchcraft…wizardry
e. wheat…chaff
8. It is no wonder that insect displays are very
popular at zoological parks worldwide;
____________ make up over 90% of all
____________ on Earth.
a. ants…insects
b. zoos…museums
c. arthropods…animals
d. administrators…bureaucrats
e. curators…people
9. Artistic expression is highly culture-specific;
that is to say, the forms art takes and the
functions it performs vary radically according
to the ____________ location and
____________ of the artist.
a. original…temperament
b. geographic…ethnicity
c. local…desires
d. temperate…predilections
e. possible…opportunities

10. The Industrial Revolution greatly improved
physical living conditions for many European
inhabitants; however, it also initially fomented
____________ working conditions and
human rights transgressions such as
____________ labor.
a. radical…intensive
b. insufficient…malicious
c. luxurious…inimical
d. unsafe…child
e. regressive…hard
11. In literature, a literal image is one that is
unambiguously ____________ to sensory per-
ception, but a ____________ image is subject
to wide-ranging interpretation.
a. apparent…figurative
b. open…closer
c. subject…possible
d. interpretive…retractable
e. closed…amorphous
– THE GRE VERBAL SECTION–
128
12. Voltaire espoused the philosophy that an
enlightened monarch would rule with benevo-
lence; such a ruler, he believed, would promote
____________ in order to ____________ the
rights of the populace.
a. communication…clarify
b. nutrition…purify
c. conservation…countermand

d. iniquity…evince
e. reforms…enhance
13. Technical shortcomings hindered the advent of
polyphonic music until the Renaissance era,
when ____________ arrangements became
increasingly common.
a. popular
b. romantic
c. complex
d. string
e. electronic
14. Metacognition is the term for what, why, and
how we know what we know; in other words, it
is ____________ about ____________.
a. much ado…nothing
b. thinking…thinking
c. potentially…knowledge
d. convincing…explanation
e. presumably…research
15. Science education can be greatly enhanced by
the use of interactive videodisc technology; it
can be a tremendous ____________ to see a
scientific principle in action, rather than
merely to read about it.
a. advantage
b. challenge
c. tedium
d. calamity
e. perception
16. Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth

without running into extremes; in fact, we
have frequently to exhaust the part of
____________, and even of ____________,
before we work our way up to the noble goal of
tranquil wisdom.
a. yoga…tai chi
b. opulence…complacency
c. parcel…obedience
d. error…folly
e. ourselves…others
17. Any grand quest commences with the blind,
intuitive calculation that, against all odds, the
seeker will inevitably ____________.
a. overreach
b. commiserate
c. triumph
d. dominate
e. participate
18. Examining the means by which traditional
societies living in large groups keep all mem-
bers supplied with food provides illuminating
contrast between the objective material condi-
tions of life and the culture bearers’
____________ of those ____________.
a. enchantment…groups
b. perceptions…conditions
c. scrutiny…societies
d. contemplation…proofs
e. illustrations…objects
– THE GRE VERBAL SECTION–

129
19. Let it be remembered that this plan is neither
recommended to blind approbation, nor to
blind ____________, but to a sedate and can-
did consideration.
a. idiosyncrasy
b. pathology
c. appeasement
d. uniformity
e. reprobation
20. Speak not but what may benefit others or
yourself; avoid ____________ conversation.
a. trifling
b. assertive
c. laudable
d. dormant
e. implausible
– THE GRE VERBAL SECTION–
130
Reading Comprehension
Instructions: Read the passages that follow. After each passage, answer the content-based questions
about it. Each question must be answered using only the information that is either implied or stated
in the passage.
Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo. Listen to it carefully: It is not an articulate, clear, well-
defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to
another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in
a mountain. Still, this reverberation cannot go on forever. It can travel within as wide a circle as
you please: The circle remains, nonetheless, a closed one. Our laughter is always the laughter of a
group. It may, perchance, have happened to you, when seated in a railway carriage or at table
d’hote, to hear travelers relating to one another’s stories which must have been comic to them, for

they laughed heartily. Had you been one of their company, you would have laughed like them; but,
as you were not, you had no desire whatsoever to do so. A man who was once asked why he did
not weep at a sermon, when everybody else was shedding tears, replied: “I don’t belong to the
parish!” What that man thought of tears would be still more true of laughter. However sponta-
neous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other
laughers, real or imaginary. How often has it been said that the fuller the theater, the more uncon-
trolled the laughter of the audience! On the other hand, how often has the remark been made that
many comic effects are incapable of translation from one language to another, because they refer
to the customs and ideas of a particular social group! It is through not understanding the impor-
tance of this double fact that the comic has been looked upon as a mere curiosity in which the
mind finds amusement, and laughter itself as a strange, isolated phenomenon, without any bear-
ing on the rest of human activity. Hence those definitions that tend to make the comic into an
abstract relation between ideas:“an intellectual contrast,”“a palpable absurdity,”etc.,—definitions
that, even were they really suitable to every form of the comic, would not in the least explain why
the comic makes us laugh. How, indeed, should it come about that this particular logical relation,
as soon as it is perceived, contracts, expands, and shakes our limbs, while all other relations leave
the body unaffected? It is not from this point of view that we shall approach the problem. To
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