Word of the Week

_{Updated October 5, 2025}

Difficult Vocabulary is a part of the LSAT. We’ve put together a collection of each “Word of the Week” segment from the Thinking LSAT as a jumping off point for your training as a gladiator of the English language.

 

Absolution	the act of forgiving someone for having done something wrong or sinful	The jury’s verdict of “not guilty” was absolution in the eyes of the law.
Abstemious	marked by restraint especially in the eating of food or drinking of alcohol	Being abstemious diners, they avoid restaurants with all-you-can-eat buffets.
Adroit	having or showing skill, cleverness, or resourcefulness in handling situations	Rumor has always played a role in politics, but rarely have the backstage operatives been so adroit, and so cynical, in their use of vitriol.
Aegis	control or guidance especially by an individual, group, or system	Having no claim to the land under the aegis of the law, the cattle baron decided to claim it by force.
Agglomerations	the action or process of collecting in a mass	How does a singular musical personality emerge from an agglomeration of pitches?
Amanuensis	one employed to write from dictation or to copy manuscript	The best-selling author wrote the libretto with their partner and served as a kind of amanuensis to the production.
Ameliorate	to make better or more tolerable	Many illnesses can be at least ameliorated by a positive cast of mind.
Anomie	unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals	Yolanda finds herself increasingly at odds with colleagues because of her impatience with poor families’ unshakeable distrust and anomie.
Antipathy	a strong feeling of dislike	Utley earned the antipathy of Mets fans during a storied career with the Phillies.
Archipelago	an expanse of water with many scattered islands	This storm is currently moving west toward the Bahamas, although it is expected to veer north before reaching the archipelago.
Arrogate	to claim or seize without justification	They've arrogated to themselves the power to change the rules arbitrarily.
Ascribe	to refer to a supposed cause, source, or author: to say or think that (something) is caused by, comes from, or is associated with a particular person or thing	These poems are usually ascribed to Homer.
Askance	with disapproval or distrust	We looked askance at the dealer's assertion that the car had never been in an accident.
Augur	to give promise of	This bad news augurs disaster for all of us.
Avail	advantage toward attainment of a goal or purpose	Their effort was of little/no avail.
Avoid	to keep away from	Evenly drizzle butter to avoid dry spots.
Avuncular	suggestive of an uncle especially in kindliness or geniality	The kind, avuncular man always had time for a chat with the neighborhood kids.
Axiom	a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument or inference	Reese merely flipped that axiom on its head by asking to be coached harder.
Blithely	lacking due thought or consideration	He showed blithe disregard for the rights of others.
Bulwark	a strong support or protection	Federal firefighting crews are the main bulwark against the largest of fires.
Cantankerous	difficult or irritating to deal with	Contemporaries often found him aloof, standoffish, and cantankerous and his mannerisms and diction inscrutable.
Compatible	capable of existing together in harmony	The printer is compatible with most computers.
Concomitant	accompanying especially in a subordinate or incidental way	But even if the numbers are really that high, there hasn’t been a concomitant uptick in symptoms.
Concupiscence	strong desire	the Puritans did not condemn concupiscence but rather the satisfaction of it in ways they deemed illicit.
Consistent	marked by harmony, regularity, or steady continuity	The sixty-five-year-old filmmaker continues to practice his craft with consistent artistic aplomb.
Crestfallen	feeling shame or humiliation	After losing the playoff game, the team was crestfallen.
Cribbed	pilfer, steal, plagiarize	She cribbed a line or two from her favorite poet.
Daedalian	artistically or ingeniously designed	In the Greek fable of Icarus and Daedalus, the former ignores his father’s warnings about hubris and, in particular, flying too close to the sun.
Defenestration	a usually swift dismissal or expulsion	History's most famous defenestration, was on May 23, 1618 when two imperial regents were found guilty of violating guarantees of religious freedom and were thrown out the window of Prague Castle.
Delectation	delight, enjoyment	Here is some chocolate for your delectation.
Delimit	to fix or define the limits of	Strict guidelines delimit his responsibilities.
Deposition	the direct change of state from a gas to a solid, like the formation of frost from water vapor.	Rivers carry sediments for deposition in new locations.
Derangement	to disturb the operation or functions of	Being stranded at night on a lonely road would derange anyone.
Desideratum	something desired as essential	Airports supply the greatest desideratum of physical retail: foot traffic.
Dispute	to engage in argument	Legislators hotly disputed the bill.
Dispositive	relating to or bringing about the settlement of an issue	The discovery of the missing document, which confirmed his story, was the dispositive fact that won him the appeal.
Doddering	showing or involving a loss of physical or cognitive abilities in old age	The show provided a side of the singer few had seen — a bit doddering, sometimes befuddled and the source of the series’ comedy.
Effect (verb)	to cause to come into being	The duty of the legislature is to effect the will of the citizens.
Elucidation	to give a clarifying explanation or analysis	When asked for details, he declined to elucidate further.
Engendered	to cause to exist or to develop	The issue has engendered a considerable amount of debate.
Eschew	to avoid habitually especially on moral or practical grounds	They now eschew the violence of their past.
Escrow	a deed, a bond, money, or a piece of property held in trust by a third party to be turned over to the grantee only upon fulfillment of a condition	The sale is technically still pending because the home is in the escrow process, which can take around a month.
Execrable	very bad, detestable	Living conditions in the slums were execrable.
Extant	currently or actually existing	There are few extant records from that period.
Extirpate	to destroy completely	By the 1930s, apex predators had been extirpated from the area, largely due to hunting, government eradication programs and habitat loss.
Extraneous	not forming an essential or vital part	She sped up the process by eliminating all extraneous steps.
Few	Not many, not much	Few students did well on their final exam.
Goosed	to increase the activity, speed, power, intensity, or amount of	The rise has goosed the company’s coffers to the tune of $3 billion.
Haunts	a place habitually frequented	Jude Law plays Jake Friedken, the owner of fictional buzzy downtown haunt, The Black Rabbit.
Immiseration	the act of making miserable	Already, the population faced immiseration and the ravages of diseases like influenza and whooping cough.
Impolitic	not politic, unwise	They have repeatedly run into trouble for off-the-cuff and impolitic remarks.
Inaugurate	to dedicate ceremoniously, observe formally the beginning of	They inaugurated the new headquarters with a brief ceremony.
Inchoate	being only partly in existence or operation	As presented here, the links between the two are both vivid and inchoate; concrete and fuzzy; real and imagined.
Inexorable	not to be persuaded, moved, or stopped	Still, the album and the movie exert an inexorable hold on me.
Inimical	being adverse often by reason of hostility or malevolence	They previously pleaded guilty to one gross misdemeanor count of driving after cancellation after being deemed inimical to the public safety.
Insouciance	lighthearted unconcern	He is only 18 years old, but presents more insouciance than innocence on the court.
Inveighed	to protest or complain bitterly or vehemently	Some have inveighed against the idea for years, often in ludicrous terms.
Itinerant	traveling from place to place	An itinerant musician can see a lot of the world.
Kibosh	something that serves as a check or stop	Inevitably, though, another recession will come putting the kibosh on job and income growth.
Knave	a tricky deceitful fellow	He plays the role of the duplicitous knave who tries to foil the play's hero.
Lacunae	a blank space or a missing part	Despite all these lacunae, those reforms were a vast improvement.
Legerdemain	a display of skill or adroitness	The illusionist's show is an entertaining blend of legerdemain and over-the-top showmanship.
Little	small in condition, distinction, or scope	Facts were little known at the time.
Machination	a scheming or crafty action or artful design intended to accomplish some usually evil end	They relied onbackstage machinations that have dominated the film industry.
Macropterous	having long or large wings	The macropterous grasshopper easily leapt into the air and flew across the field.
Mélange	a mixture often of incongruous elements	The house was a mélange of architectural styles.
Mercurial	having qualities of eloquence, ingenuity, or thievishness attributed to the god Mercury or to the influence of the planet Mercury	The boss's mood is so mercurial that we never know how he's going to react to anything.
Micropterous	having small wings	The micropterous beetle crawled through the leaf litter, its wings too small for flight.
Milquetoast	timid, meek, or unassertive; lacking in character or vigor	The Dolphins' milquetoast defense is allowing 33 points a game, and 13 of 15 offensive drives by opponents have resulted in points.
Miserly	marked by grasping meanness and penuriousness	The team's miserly owner refused to buy new equipment.
Mollify	to soothe in temper or disposition	He tried to mollify his critics with an apology.
Normative	conforming to or based on norms and standards	Being averse to change, or using change to cope with normative stressors, can have a significant impact on wellbeing.
Obfuscate	to be evasive, unclear, or confusing	The suspect often obfuscated during the interrogation.
Obloquy	a strongly condemnatory utterance	Unable to mount a rational defense of their position, they unleashed a torrent of obloquy on their opponent.
Obscurantism	opposition to the spread of knowledge	The history of the practice presents a parade of eccentrics and fanatics, enlivened by obscurantism and riot.
Offal	the waste or by-product of a process	In many restaurants across the country, animal organs such as beef offal are displayed to show freshness, especially for hotpot.
Opprobrium	something that brings disgrace	Collaborators with the enemy did not escape the opprobrium of the townspeople.
Ostensible	being such in appearance, plausible rather than demonstrably true or real	The ostensible reason for the meeting turned out to be a trick to get him to the surprise party.
Panopticon	a circular prison built with cells arranged radially so that a guard at a central position can see all the prisoners	The constant presence of video cameras can turn our streets and homes into panopticons.
Parsimonious	frugal to the point of stinginess	Chelsea are famously parsimonious in the transfer market, after all.
Penury	a cramping and oppressive lack of resources	They lived in a time of genteel penury.
Pleonasm	the use of more words than those necessary to denote mere sense	Saying "free gift" is a pleonasm, since gifts are by definition free.
Plumbed	to measure closely or weight	The play plumbs the depths of human nature.
Prescribe	to lay down a rule or dictate	The doctor prescribed three months of physical therapy for my leg injury.
Proscribe	to condemn or forbid as harmful or unlawful	Regulations proscribe the use of electronic devices on board a plane while it is landing.
Punctilio	a minute detail of conduct in a ceremony or in observance of a code	The king's ancient ritual was filled with punctilios, from the precise bow of the head to the ceremonial greeting of each dignitary.
Quotidian	occurring every day, or regularly occurring	They are plagued by a quotidian coughing fit, the result of years of smoking.
Rapacious	excessively grasping or covetous	Nothing livens things up like a whole team of rapacious basketball players descending upon the pizza parlor.
Reject	to refuse to accept, consider, submit to, take for some purpose, or use	My teacher rejected my excuse for being late.
Rigmarole	something (such as a procedure or an explanation) that is long, complicated, and tedious	I went to my insurers and started the usual rigmarole.
Salient	standing out conspicuously or prominent	It is similar to Prohibition, but there are a couple of salient differences.
Salubrious	favorable to or promoting health or well-being	Fresh air and exercise are always salubrious.
Scofflaw	a contemptuous law violator	The scofflaws regularly return using new profiles.
Skirl	to emit a high shrill tone	The skirl of the bagpipes, the street jugglers, the whisky tastings, the…wait, what the heck is that?
Sobriquet	a descriptive name or epithet	Baseball player Ty Cobb was also known by the sobriquet “The Georgia Peach.”
Solipsism	a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing	She herself elicits scant sympathy, such is her solipsism and lack of self-awareness.
Specious	having a false look of truth or genuineness	He justified his actions with specious reasoning.
Struthious	of, relating to, or resembling	The bird is very struthious in it's similarities to the ostrich.
Stultifying	to have a dulling or inhibiting effect on	The government has been stultified by bureaucracy.
Sublime	to cause to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state and condense back to solid form	The cursory remarks of the large-minded stranger, of whom he knew absolutely nothing beyond a commonplace name, were sublimed by his death.
Success	favorable or desired outcome	Your success may depend on working through self-worth issues.
Succotash	lima or shell beans and kernels of green corn cooked together; or a mix of things	Combining lima beans with corn makes a traditional succotash dish.
Tantamount	equivalent in value, significance, or effect	His statement was tantamount to an admission of guilt.
Tariff	a schedule of duties imposed by a government on imported or in some countries exported goods	Such tariffs are usually imposed on broad classes of imports, rather than certain companies.
Tautology	needless repetition of an idea, statement, or word	“A beginner who has just started” is a tautology.
Thrummed	to sound with a monotonous hum	You can hear the steady thrum of the turbines in the power plant.
Truism	an undoubted or self-evident truth	One ironclad truism about sports is that all streaks eventually come to an end.
Unique	being the only one	His unique concern was his own comfort.
Unless	except on the condition that	He will do it unless he is unable.
Upbraid	to criticize severely	His wife upbraided him for his irresponsible handling of the family finances.
Verisimilitude	similarity to the truth	The novel's degree of verisimilitude is compromised by 18th-century characters who speak in very 21st-century English.
Veritas	strength of truth and its prevalence	Their statement lacked the level of veritas that we strive to uphold.
Vicarious	experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another	I am a vicarious eater, often preferring a description of a meal to eating it.
Vituperate	to abuse or censure severely or abusively	Every week the minister would ascend the pulpit and vituperate the parishioners for a litany of vices.
Waylay	to temporarily stop the movement or progress of (someone or something)	Gangs sometimes waylay travelers on that road.
Zoonotic	an infection or disease that is transmissible from animals to humans under natural conditions	A zoonotic virus is a virus that lives naturally in an animal and can infect human cells.