Word of the Week

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.

 

Abrogate	to formally abolish, cancel, or annul something	The court decided to abrogate the outdated regulations.
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.
Admonition	authoritative counsel or warning	The lawyer received an admonition for violation of the rule.
Adroit	having or showing skill, cleverness, or resourcefulness in handling situations	His adroit handling of the client's financial situation impressed everyone in the room.
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 with a positive mindset.
Anachronism	an error in chronology; incongruous to the present	Wigs and robes are clearly an anachronism in the legal system.
Anomie	unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals	Yolanda's constant pressure to succeed left her feeling a deep sense of anomie and disconnected from society.
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 moving west toward the Bahamas, but it is expected to veer north before reaching the archipelago.
Armamentarium	entire collection of resources available or utilized for carrying out duties or tasks	A doctor’s armamentarium includes stethoscopes, scalpels, syringes, and medications.
Arrogate	to claim or seize without justification	They’ve arrogated to themselves the power to change the rules arbitrarily.
Ascetic	someone who practices self-denial as personal or religious discipline	He is ascetic compared to his predecessor who was a big-spender.
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 to 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.
Bonhomie	a disposition characterized by cheerful, good-natured, and approachable friendliness	There was a lot of cheerful bonhomie among the colleagues during the holiday party.
Blithely	lacking due thought or consideration	He showed blithe disregard for the rights of others.
Breviloquent	characterized by conciseness or brevity	A perfectly expressed haiku is a breviloquent form of poetry.
Browbeating	to intimidate or disconcert in a stern manner	His constant browbeating made everyone in the office afraid to speak up.
Bulwark	a strong support or protection	Federal firefighting crews are the main bulwark against the largest of fires.
Calumniator	a person who tells malicious lies or false statements about someone else	No one, however holy, is safe from the tongue of the calumniator.
Cantankerous	difficult or irritating to deal with	Contemporaries found him aloof and cantankerous, with cryptic mannerisms.
Casuistry	specious argument or rationalization	Whitman's casuistry suggests he is convincing himself this health regimen will work.
Chiaroscuro	the quality of being veiled or partly in shadow	The novel explores the chiaroscuro of morality, where virtue and corruption coexist.
Compatible	capable of existing together in harmony	The printer is compatible with most computers.
Concomitant	accompanying especially in a subordinate or incidental way	Even if the numbers are that high, there hasn’t been a concomitant rise in symptoms.
Concupiscence	strong desire	The Puritans condemned not concupiscence, but its illicit satisfaction.
Consistent	marked by harmony, regularity, or steady continuity	The sixty-five-year-old filmmaker practices his craft with consistent artistic aplomb.
Contumacious	stubbornly disobedient, rebellious, or insubordinate	The contumacious witness refused to answer, so the judge charged her with contempt.
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	The engineer’s daedalian design impressed everyone with its fine details.
Defenestration	a usually swift dismissal or expulsion	In 1618, two regents were thrown from Prague Castle in a famous defenestration.
Delectation	delight, enjoyment	Here is some chocolate for your delectation.
Delimit	to fix or define the limits of	Strict guidelines delimit his responsibilities.
Demarcating	separate or distinguish from	Who draws the line demarcating tort liability?
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 alone at night would derange anyone.
Desideratum	something desired as essential	Airports provide retail's greatest desideratum: foot traffic.
Diminution	a reduction in the size, extent, or importance of something	The disease shows no signs of diminution.
Dispute	to engage in argument	Legislators fiercely disputed the bill.
Dispositive	relating to or bringing about the settlement of an issue	The missing document was the dispositive fact that won his appeal.
Doddering	showing or involving a loss of physical or cognitive abilities in old age	The show revealed the singer as doddering, befuddled, and funny.
Effect (verb)	to cause to come into being	The legislature's duty is to effect the will of the citizens.
Effusive	expressing feelings of approval in an unrestrained manner	They gave their leader effusive praise for her decision.
Elucidation	to give a clarifying explanation or analysis	When asked for details, he declined to elucidate further.
Emolument	the returns arising from office or employment	The yearly emolument for the position was a deciding factor for the applicant.
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.
Euchre	to cheat or trick	They were euchred out of their life savings.
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 were extirpated from the area by hunting and habitat loss.
Extraneous	not forming an essential or vital part	She sped up the process by eliminating extraneous steps.
Few	not many, not much	Few students did well on their final exam.
Flummoxed	bewildered or perplexed	Unprepared, I was flummoxed by the exam questions.
Garrulous	excessively talkative, especially about trivial matters	Amanda tried to ignore the garrulous man sitting next to her.
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.
Gravamen	essence or most serious part of a grievance or complaint	The noise was the gravamen of the complaint against him.
Guffaw	a loud and boisterous laugh	She paused before letting out a short but loud guffaw.
Haunts	a place habitually frequented	Jude Law plays Jake Friedken, owner of the downtown haunt, The Black Rabbit.
Heterodox	not conforming with traditional or accepted beliefs	He paid no price at the polls for his heterodox views.
Immiseration	the act of making miserable	The population already faced immiseration and diseases like  influenza.
Impervious	unable to be affected by	The final boss of the game was impervious to our attacks.
Impolitic	not politic, unwise	They faced trouble for impolitic remarks.
Imprecations	curses, hostile statements	She muttered imprecations at the man who had wronged her.
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	The links between the two art pieces are both vivid and inchoate.
Incommunicado	without means of or not allowing communication	The suspect was held incommunicado for three days before being released.
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 pleaded guilty after being deemed inimical to public safety.
Insouciance	lighthearted unconcern	At 18, he shows more insouciance than innocence on the court.
Intransigent	refusal to change ideas, opinions, or behaviors even when asked to compromise	Both governments remained intransigent on their borders, making a peace deal seem unlikely.
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, another recession will put the kibosh on job growth.
Knave	a tricky deceitful fellow	He plays the duplicitous knave who tries to foil the play’s hero.
Lacunae	a blank space or a missing part	Despite these lacunae, the reforms are an improvement.
Legerdemain	a display of skill or adroitness	The illusionist’s show blends legerdemain with 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 on back stage machinations that have dominated the film industry.
Macropterous	having long or large wings	The macropterous grasshopper easily 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 allows 33 points a game.
Miserly	marked by grasping meanness and penuriousness	The team’s miserly owner refused to buy new equipment.
Modicum	small or limited amount of something	The band enjoyed a modicum of success early on.
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	Averse to change, people may struggle with normative stressors.
Obfuscate	to be evasive, unclear, or confusing	The suspect often obfuscated during the interrogation.
Obloquy	a strongly condemnatory utterance	Unable to defend their position, they unleashed obloquy on their opponent.
Obscurantism	opposition to the spread of knowledge	The practice's history is marked by eccentrics, fanatics, obscurantism and riot.
Obstreperous	noisy, unruly, and stubbornly defiant or difficult to control	The obstreperous child refused to listen to his math teacher.
Offal	the waste or by-product of a process	Restaurants display beef offal to show freshness, especially for hotpot.
Onerous	involving an amount of effort and difficulty that is oppressively burdensome.	He found his duties increasingly onerous.
Opprobrium	something that brings disgrace	Enemy collaborators faced the townspeople's opprobrium.
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.
Panacea	remedy for all ills and difficulties	The legislation will help farmers, but is not a panacea for all problems.
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 parsimonious in the transfer market, after all.
Paucity	smallness in number, or fewness	The finale can’t hide the first hour’s paucity of imagination.
Penumbra	rights that are not explicitly named	The rights are within the penumbra of the constitution.
Penury	a cramping and oppressive lack of resources	They lived in a time of genteel penury.
Percolation	to diffuse through; to filter	The percolation of rumors through the town was continuous.
Pernicious	having a very harmful or deadly effect, often in a subtle or gradual way	His pernicious brain tumor caused him serious problems.
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 physical therapy for my leg injury.
Prolixity	the state or quality of being unnecessarily or tediously wordy	The legal document was dismissed for its sheer prolixity.
Propinquity	the state of being close to someone or something	He kept his distance as though afraid propinquity might lead him into temptation.
Proprioception	the body’s ability to perceive it’s own position, movement, and force in space	Athletes like gymnasts and dancers typically possess a high level of proprioception.
Proscribe	to condemn or forbid as harmful or unlawful	Regulations proscribe the use of electronic devices while a plane is landing.
Punctilio	a minute detail of conduct in a ceremony or in observance of a code	The king’s ritual was filled with punctilios, from precise bows to ceremonial greetings.
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	A team of rapacious basketball players can liven up any pizza parlor.
Recalcitrant	a stubborn refusal to obey authority, rules, or guidance	The recalcitrant pony resisted all attempts by the wranglers to lead it into the trailer.
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 bagpipes filled the street as jugglers performed nearby.
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 stranger's cursory remarks were sublimed by his death.
Success	favorable or desired outcome	Your success depends on working through hard challenges.
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.
Suzerain	a sovereign or state having some control over another state	The grand Khan was the suzerain of the Russian princes.
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.
Testatrix	a woman who has made a will or given a legacy	The testatrix left her entire estate to her grandchildren.
Throes	involved in a difficult, painful, or chaotic process	The country is in the throes of a major economic crisis.
Thrummed	to sound with a monotonous hum	You can hear the steady thrum of the power plant's turbines.
Truism	an undoubted or self-evident truth	An ironclad truism about sports is that all streaks 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 mishandling the family finances.
Verisimilitude	similarity to the truth	The novel’s verisimilitude suffers from characters speaking modern English.
Veritas	strength of truth and its prevalence	Their statement lacked the 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 vituperate the parishioners for their vices.
Vociferous	marked by vehement, insistent outcry	The decision faced vociferous community objections.
Waylay	to temporarily stop the movement or progress of (someone or something)	Gangs often 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.