Vocab practice · 1 of 3
Ms. Ortiz tried to foster curiosity in her class, answering every question with a new question to explore.
Which meaning fits?
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Estimated time
- 35 minutes
- Practice
- Words in Context question bank
What you’ll learn
- Predict the blank from the clue, then use each hard word's meaning, or at least its group and charge, to cross out.
- Tell helping words from blocking ones by which way they push: foster and refine, impede and stymie.
- Judge lasting words by what lasts, and keep entrenched and precarious apart.
- Sort words for things asleep, temporary or out of date: latent, dormant, provisional, obsolete.
- Match words for time and relation exactly: anachronistic, imminent, inevitable, contingent, subordinate.
Why this matters on the SAT
Words for how things change, last and relate
Many SAT texts describe things acting on other things: a program that helps a habit grow, a flaw that stalls a project, a subsidy that won't go away, a result that depends on the weather. So the hard words in the choices are often words for change, cause and relation.
About three in ten words in context questions turn on knowing a hard word, and since the SAT rarely uses the same one twice, this lesson teaches groups of words that share a meaning, each word with its charge. For words of change, the charge often comes from which way they push, or from what they keep.
Solution to the example
Clue: “rather than overturn it” and the colon. The trend remains downward, but it was less uniform than the logs suggested.
Predict: correct the conclusion a little without throwing it out, a positive change.
Cross out by group and charge: repudiate (C), to reject outright, is the negative, overturning move the text rules out; condense (D), to shorten, is about length, not correction.
Check: refine means to improve by making small changes, so the answer is A.
B tempts most: preserve (keep unchanged) echoes the overall trend remains downward, but declined steadily became less uniform, so the conclusion changed.
SAT example
A survey of nineteenth-century shipping logs led historian Ana Ruiz to conclude that a port's trade declined steadily after 1860. Recently digitized customs records reveal two brief periods of increased activity during that decade. Ruiz argues that these records should _____ her original conclusion rather than overturn it: the overall trend remains downward, but it was less uniform than the logs suggested.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
- A
refine
- B
preserve
- C
repudiate
- D
condense
Cross out by meaning, or by group and charge
Every word in this lesson belongs to a group of words that share a meaning, and has a charge: positive, negative or neutral. For words of change, the charge comes from one of two places:
- Helping and blocking words take their charge from the way they push. Foster (help grow) is positive and impede (slow down) is negative. But a word's charge isn't the same as good news: a vaccine that impedes a virus is good news, and a rumor that fosters distrust isn't. So for these words, predict which way the blank pushes the thing after it: does it help that thing grow, or hold it back?
- Lasting words are different: they take their charge from what usually lasts. A forest that's preserved is good news; a habit that's entrenched usually isn't. So preserve is positive, entrench usually leans negative, and persist often does.
A few words go either way, and the text decides: to provoke is to stir up, whether thought or anger, and to exploit is to make full use of something or to take unfair advantage of it. The words for time and relation, later in the lesson, are mostly neutral, so their meaning does the work.
So the routine from the first lesson gets one move in its fourth step:
- Find the clue: read the whole text and find the words that show what the blank means.
- Read the signal: same way, cause and effect, or opposite; flip for a negation; when the whole text is the clue, follow the turn.
- Predict the blank in your own plain words, or at least its charge.
- Cross out the choices that don't match: by meaning when you know the word, by group and charge when you only half know it.
- Check the choice that's left: does the text show exactly this?
Each section that follows gives one group in a table, then a sentence for each word, labeled with its charge: the word is in bold, and the clue that shows its meaning is underlined.
Helping and improving: words that push a thing forward
These words describe something that helps another thing grow, recover or get better, or sets right what's wrong: they push the thing after them forward, and that push makes them positive. So when the clue shows the thing after the blank growing, being restored or improving, they're the words to look for, even when that thing is unwelcome: a rumor can foster distrust. When the thing after the blank is a problem, the push flips: to rectify a mistake is to set it right, which is positive, and to compound it is to make it bigger, which is negative.
| Word | Means | Charge |
|---|---|---|
| foster | to encourage the growth of | positive |
| rectify | to set right, correct | positive |
| replenish | to fill up again | positive |
| refine | to improve by making small changes | positive |
- Note: Positive
- The weekly story hour helped foster a love of reading in the town's children, who soon began asking for library cards of their own.
- Note: Positive
- The bank promised to rectify the mistake by refunding the double charge within a week.
- Note: Positive
- At the stream, the hikers stopped to replenish their water bottles, filling each one to the top.
- Note: Positive
- The baker kept refining her recipe, using a little less sugar and a little more lemon each time.
Refine changes a thing a little and keeps it. To preserve something is to keep it unchanged, and to repudiate it is to throw it out; a refined conclusion sits between the two, as in the opening question. Replenish is built on the Latin for full, as in plenty.
Pick each word's meaning from the clue in its sentence.
In this question, predict which way the blank pushes the architects' two goals, then cross out the choices that push the wrong way.
Practice problems
A new urban park
Practice problem
In designing the new urban park, the landscape architects aimed to create a space that would ______ both environmental sustainability and community engagement, incorporating native plants alongside outdoor classrooms and art installations.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
Blocking, worsening and canceling: words that hold a thing back
These words describe something that holds another thing back, wipes it out or makes a bad thing worse. Impede, stymie and nullify push against the thing after them; compound pushes a problem the other way, making it bigger, and it's negative because what grows is a problem. So when the clue shows the thing after the blank moving forward, impede, stymie and nullify can go by direction alone; when it shows a setback, ask what kind: held back, made worse or canceled. The last word in the table only looks like one of them.
| Word | Means | Charge |
|---|---|---|
| impede | to slow down or get in the way of | negative |
| stymie | to block or thwart, hold back | negative |
| compound | to make a problem worse by adding to it | negative |
| nullify | to cancel, leave with no effect | negative |
| circumvent | to find a way around a rule or an obstacle | neutral |
- Note: Negative
- Fallen trees impeded the rescue trucks, which had to stop every few hundred meters to clear the road.
- Note: Negative
- The puzzle's last clue stymied every team: not one of them solved it before time ran out.
- Note: Negative
- The driver compounded his mistake: after missing the exit, he took a wrong turn that cost another hour.
- Note: Negative
- The referee's whistle nullified the goal, so the score stayed tied.
- Note: Neutral
- The library circumvented its tiny budget by borrowing books from other libraries instead of buying them.
Circumvent doesn't block anything: it gets around a block. Circum- means around, as in the lesson on word parts, so a rule that's circumvented still stands; someone found a way past it. Its charge depends on what's dodged: a tight budget or a safety law.
Compound sounds neutral, since a compound is a mix, but to compound a problem is to make it worse. Stymie comes from golf, where it named a ball sitting in the path of another. And nullify goes all the way to nothing (Latin nullus, none), so it's too strong for something that's only weakened; negate means much the same.
Pick each word's meaning from the clue in its sentence.
Vocab practice · 1 of 3
Deep snow can impede the plows, so a ten-minute route takes them an hour.
Which meaning fits?
In this question, predict the direction from the clue, then cross out the choice that points the other way.
Practice problems
A failed experiment
Practice problem
Contrary to popular belief, the scientist's "failure" to replicate his original experiment was not a setback but rather a ______: it prompted a new line of inquiry that ultimately produced richer results.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
Lasting, or likely to fall: words for staying power
These words say whether something holds on or could easily be lost. Unlike helping and blocking words, their charge comes from what lasts. A forest that's preserved is good news; a cough that persists, a myth that's perpetuated or a habit that's entrenched usually isn't.
| Word | Means | Charge |
|---|---|---|
| persist | to keep going, continue | neutral, often negative |
| perpetuate | to keep something going (perpetual: never ending) | usually negative |
| entrench | to fix so firmly that it's hard to remove | usually negative |
| preserve | to keep safe and unchanged | positive |
| precarious | insecure, likely to fall or fail | negative |
- Note: Often negative
- The cough persisted for weeks, long after the fever was gone.
- Note: Usually negative
- Cartoons perpetuate the myth that bats are blind, repeating it so often that many viewers never question it.
- Note: Usually negative
- By the time the town tried to close Main Street to cars, driving downtown was entrenched: every shop, parking lot and bus route had been built around it.
- Note: Positive
- The town preserved the old mill, repairing its wheel and keeping it as it looked a century ago.
- Note: Negative
- The climbers' position on the ledge was precarious: one loose rock could send them sliding.
Entrenched and precarious are opposites. Entrench comes from trench: an entrenched habit is dug in, like soldiers in a trench, and hard to remove. Precarious comes from the Latin for asking or praying: something held only by someone else's favor, so it could be lost at any moment.
Perpetual means never ending; its verb, perpetuate, means to keep something going, usually something the writer wishes would stop.
Pick each word's meaning from the clue in its sentence.
Vocab practice · 1 of 3
Twenty years of daily practice can entrench a habit so deeply that no one questions it.
Which meaning fits?
In this question, decide which way the news would move the policymakers, then cross out the words that point the other way.
Practice problems
Cheaper renewable energy
Practice problem
A recent economic analysis reveals that the projected cost of switching to renewable energy will be far lower than previously assumed. This revelation may encourage policymakers who have long opposed aggressive emissions reductions to _____ their stance in upcoming negotiations.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
Asleep, temporary or out of date: words for things not in full force
These words describe something not in full force: present but not yet showing, holding only for now, or no longer in use. Most are neutral, so the meaning does the work. Ask whether the thing could still wake up, will be replaced, or already has been.
| Word | Means | Charge |
|---|---|---|
| latent | present but not yet active or showing | neutral |
| dormant | asleep, inactive for now but able to wake | neutral |
| provisional | for now, until something final replaces it | neutral |
| obsolete | out of date, replaced by something newer | negative |
| defunct | no longer existing or working | neutral |
- Note: Neutral
- Her talent for drawing stayed latent for years: she only discovered it at forty, in a class she took for fun.
- Note: Neutral
- The volcano is dormant: it hasn't erupted in a century, but it could wake again.
- Note: Neutral
- The league posted a provisional schedule, to be replaced once the stadium confirms its dates.
- Note: Negative
- Smartphones made the town's last pay phone obsolete: no one had used it in years.
- Note: Neutral
- The rail line is defunct: its last train ran decades ago, and weeds now cover the tracks.
Dormant can wake; defunct can't. Dormant comes from the French for sleeping, and defunct from the Latin for dead. Latent means there but not showing, so a latent power is real even when no one uses it, unlike a nominal one, which exists in name only. And provisional describes a plan or a conclusion held until something replaces it, not something broken or incomplete.
Pick each word's meaning from the clue in its sentence.
Vocab practice · 1 of 3
Until every ballot is counted, the website lists only a provisional winner.
Which meaning fits?
In this question, decide whether the attribution is final, disputed or only for now.
Practice problems
Unsigned sketches
Practice problem
Historian Laila Moreno notes that shipping logs place painter Ansel Voss in the port where a group of unsigned sketches was created. However, no document directly links Voss to the sketches, and several local artists used similar materials. In a catalog, Moreno lists Voss as the artist so the sketches can be grouped for study, but she cautions that the listing should not be cited as a finding and may change after comparative analysis. Moreno’s attribution is therefore ______.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
Before, after and bound to happen: words for time
These words place something in time: what came first, what's out of its period, what's about to happen and what can't be avoided. They're mostly neutral, and several have look-alikes, so read each one closely.
| Word | Means | Charge |
|---|---|---|
| precursor | something that comes before another and leads to it or signals it | neutral |
| antecedent | something that came earlier, often leading to what followed | neutral |
| anachronistic | out of place in time, belonging to another period | negative |
| imminent | about to happen | neutral |
| inevitable | certain to happen, impossible to avoid | neutral |
- Note: Neutral
- The painter's first sketch was a precursor of the mural, showing in rough lines the scene she would finish two years later.
- Note: Neutral
- The judge looked into the antecedents of the lawsuit, the quarrels over the fence that had begun ten years earlier.
- Note: Negative
- The movie about ancient Rome had an anachronistic slip: one soldier wore a wristwatch.
- Note: Neutral
- Thunder rumbled and the sky went black: the storm was imminent.
- Note: Neutral
- Once the dam cracked, the flood was inevitable: nothing could hold back that much water.
Imminent and eminent look alike, but eminent means distinguished. In imminent, the in- means on (its Latin source means to overhang), one of the *in-*s that don't mean not; in inevitable, the in- does mean not: not avoidable. Impending is close to imminent, usually for something unwelcome.
A precursor comes before; a successor comes after. Ante- in antecedent means before, like pre-. And anachronistic is built on the Greek for time, as in chronological: out of place in time, like a wristwatch in ancient Rome.
Pick each word's meaning from the clue in its sentence.
Vocab practice · 1 of 3
The museum traces the bicycle to its antecedent, a wooden “running machine” that riders pushed along with their feet.
Which meaning fits?
Depending, ranking and fitting together: words for how two things relate
These words describe how two things relate: whether one depends on the other, ranks below it, completes it, or takes it in. They're mostly neutral, so match the exact relationship the text shows.
| Word | Means | Charge |
|---|---|---|
| contingent | depending on something else, so it could have turned out otherwise | neutral |
| subordinate | lower in rank or importance | neutral |
| complementary | completing each other, each supplying what the other lacks | positive |
| subsume | to include within a larger group or rule | neutral |
| reciprocal | given and returned, mutual | neutral |
- Note: Neutral
- The picnic is contingent on the weather: if it rains, it's off.
- Note: Neutral
- On the ship, the cook was subordinate to the captain and took his orders.
- Note: Positive
- The two singers' voices are complementary: her low notes fill in exactly where his high ones leave off.
- Note: Neutral
- The library's new science shelf subsumes the old astronomy shelf: the astronomy books now sit inside it, next to biology and chemistry.
- Note: Neutral
- The neighbors' help was reciprocal: she watered his plants when he traveled, and he fed her cat when she did.
Contingent is the opposite of inevitable. A contingent outcome depended on how things happened to go and could have gone another way; an inevitable one was bound to happen. You met contingent on as a word pair in the lesson on precise words; alone, it means depending on circumstances.
Complement (to complete) isn't compliment (to praise), and it isn't corroborate (to confirm) either. Subsume comes from the Latin for take under: it takes a thing in under a larger heading, which is different from replacing it, supersede.
Pick each word's meaning from the clue in its sentence.
Vocab practice · 1 of 3
The two cooks have complementary skills: one bakes perfect bread, and the other makes the soups to go with it.
Which meaning fits?
In this question, decide exactly how the old journals relate to modern records.
Practice problems
Lighthouse weather journals
Practice problem
While digitizing nineteenth-century weather journals, researchers found that volunteer lighthouse keepers had recorded daily sea temperatures with surprising consistency. Although the keepers' instruments were less precise than those used today, their observations provide evidence from decades not covered by systematic monitoring. Because the old and modern measurements concern different periods, the journals cannot independently confirm the accuracy of current readings; scientists instead use both sets to trace changes across a longer span. In this role, the journals _____ modern oceanographic records.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
Example: temporary on paper, dug in for good
In this question, the details make a subsidy look temporary, but the turn shows what really happens to it.
Worked example
After a port strike disrupts shipments, a state government introduces a temporary subsidy for food distributors. Shipments eventually return to normal, but distributors have incorporated the payments into multiyear contracts. Each annual authorization of the subsidy still carries a one-year expiration date, and budget documents continue to classify the program as emergency relief rather than ordinary spending. Nevertheless, whenever lawmakers propose allowing the subsidy to expire, coordinated lobbying by stores, suppliers, and local officials persuades enough lawmakers to renew it. The subsidy has thus become ______.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
- A
precarious
- B
uncontested
- C
entrenched
- D
codified
Step 1
Find the clue and the turn
The text starts with a government that introduces a temporary subsidy for food distributors. Then “Nevertheless” turns to what happens every time someone tries to end it: whenever lawmakers propose allowing the subsidy to expire, coordinated lobbying by stores, suppliers, and local officials persuades enough lawmakers to renew it. Meanwhile distributors have incorporated the payments into multiyear contracts. The blank sums up that pattern. Predict fixed in place, hard to remove. That's a lasting word, and what lasts here is an emergency payment that won't go away, so its charge is negative.
Step 2
Cross out by meaning
Uncontested means not challenged. But lawmakers keep proposing to let the subsidy expire, and lobbying has to save it each time. B goes.
Codified means written into law as a standing rule. But budget documents still classify the program as emergency relief rather than ordinary spending, and it's renewed one year at a time. D goes too.
Step 3
Cross out the opposite
A tempts most. Precarious means insecure, likely to be lost, and a subsidy that still carries a one-year expiration date looks just that. But that's the paperwork, the side “Nevertheless” turns away from. In practice the subsidy survives every attempt to end it, so it's the opposite of precarious. A goes.
Step 4
Check the last choice
Entrenched means fixed so firmly that it's hard to remove, like soldiers dug into a trench. And the text says that whenever lawmakers propose allowing the subsidy to expire, coordinated lobbying by stores, suppliers, and local officials persuades enough lawmakers to renew it. A payment that survives every attempt to end it is dug in: the text shows exactly this. The answer is C.
- Correct
- Renewed every time lawmakers try to end it, the emergency subsidy has become entrenched.
Example: it could have gone another way
In this question, one sentence imagines a different history, and that sentence is the clue.
Worked example
When tracing the emergence of standardized spelling, language historian Celia Okafor notes that printers in commercially dominant cities often favored spellings no clearer than their rivals. Publishers elsewhere then copied those forms because books from the dominant cities had made them familiar to readers. Okafor adds that if other cities had controlled the book trade, equally clear rival forms might now be standard. In her account, standardization was ______.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
- A
inevitable
- B
linguistically determined
- C
contingent
- D
deliberate
Step 1
Find the clue and predict
Okafor's last point is the clue: if other cities had controlled the book trade, equally clear rival forms might now be standard. A different history would have given different spellings, so the spellings we have depended on who ran the trade. Predict dependent on circumstances, an outcome that could have turned out otherwise.
Step 2
Cross out by meaning
Linguistically determined would mean the language itself picked the winners, say because they were clearer. But the printers favored spellings no clearer than their rivals. B goes.
Deliberate means planned. But publishers copied those forms because books from the dominant cities had made them familiar to readers: they followed what readers knew, and no one in the account sets out to fix a standard. D goes too.
Step 3
Cross out the opposite
A tempts most. Standard spelling did arrive, so it can look as if it had to. But inevitable means bound to happen whatever else occurs, and Okafor says the result turned on who held the trade: if other cities had controlled the book trade, equally clear rival forms might now be standard. A goes.
Step 4
Check the last choice
Contingent means depending on something else, so that it could have turned out otherwise. In Okafor's account, the standard depended on which cities ran the book trade: the text shows exactly this. The answer is C.
- Correct
- Had other cities controlled the book trade, other spellings might be standard: standardization was contingent.
Practice problems
These four questions mix the groups, and none of them tells you which group it draws on. So start with the clue and a prediction, then use each word's meaning, or at least its group and charge.
Rain and reservoirs
Practice problem
Water from oceans and lakes evaporates, cools into clouds, and later falls as precipitation. When the rain returns to the ground, it flows into rivers and reservoirs that may have lost water during dry periods. In this way, precipitation _____ these freshwater supplies and helps sustain plants, wildlife, and communities.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A phone in the future
Practice problem
In a new science-fiction TV series set in the 2300s, characters navigate a space station using voice commands and holographic displays. Yet the protagonist keeps a rotary-dial telephone on her desk. Some critics called the phone _____, arguing that it evokes mid-twentieth-century domestic life rather than a far-future setting. The showrunner disagreed, saying the prop was chosen because its clunky mechanics highlight what’s lost when communication becomes frictionless.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
Footnotes in a novel
Practice problem
Critics sometimes treat the footnotes in Laila Moravec’s historical novel as devices that lend the narrator’s account an air of documentary certainty. Yet every note resolves a minor inconsistency only by exposing a larger conflict between the archival record and the narrator’s memory. The notes therefore ______ rather than settle the novel’s central ambiguities.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A power held in reserve
Practice problem
A proposed constitution gives the president the authority to dissolve the legislature, but it also requires new elections within forty-five days, a rule that makes dissolution politically risky. As a result, the power is largely ______—it can still shape negotiations as a looming possibility, but it is seldom invoked outright.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
Finish the lesson
9 practice examples left
Finish the remaining questions correctly to complete this lesson.
Quick recap
- Predict first: the clue gives the meaning, and the hard words only have to match it.
- Predict the push, not the news: helping words like foster move the thing after them forward, blocking words like impede hold it back, and circumvent goes around a block.
- What lasts gives the charge: a preserved forest is good news, an entrenched problem isn't, and entrenched and precarious are opposites.
- Match the meaning exactly: latent is there but unseen, provisional holds for now, contingent could have gone otherwise and inevitable couldn't.
- Every hard choice: predict from the clue, cross out by meaning or by group and charge, then check the word that's left.
Related
For the rest of this group's words and a free quiz, study the change, cause and relation words on the SAT vocabulary page.
Next lesson
Function of the underlined sentence: what does this sentence do?
Move from single words to the job a whole sentence does.
Start next lessonPractice
Practice SAT Reading & Writing
Put what you learned to work on real SAT Reading & Writing questions.
Words in Context question bank