Home / Flashcard library / High school & admissions / GRE General Test (Verbal) / Practice Questions

High school & admissions

GRE — Practice Questions flashcards

6 of 60 questions free to study here · 15 topics · the whole deck is built into Willys

Multiple-choice practice questions, one best answer each, on GRE vocabulary in context: single-blank text completions on speech, praise, mood, scarcity, change, truth, power, clarity and more.

Get the app All GRE General Test (Verbal) decks

Practice deck · part of GRE General Test (Verbal) · written against: Shorter GRE format (September 2023). Updated 2026-10-10.

Study the free sample

6 questions from the deck as they are. Flip, rate yourself, filter by topic; your progress stays in this browser.

The 6 sample questions as a list
  1. Although the novelist's letters to friends run to dozens of pages, in interviews she was famously _____, often answering a reporter's elaborate question with a single nod.

    A) querulous
    B) grandiloquent
    C) voluble
    D) taciturn
    D) taciturn

    "Although" sets the interviews against the long letters, and a nod in place of an answer marks someone taciturn, by nature sparing with words. Watch out: voluble means the opposite, talking fluently and at length, which describes the letters, not the interviews.
    Speech & Silence
  2. The historian's account of the village remains speculative, given the _____ of surviving records: a single tax roll and two parish letters.

    A) anomaly
    B) plethora
    C) efficacy
    D) paucity
    D) paucity

    Three documents is too few, and that scarcity is a paucity, which explains why the account is speculative. Watch out: plethora, an overabundance, means the opposite.
    Abundance & Scarcity
  3. The dispute over water rights proved _____: three rounds of mediation, two court rulings and a treaty all failed to resolve it.

    A) tractable
    B) facile
    C) benign
    D) intractable
    D) intractable

    A problem that defeats mediation, courts and a treaty is hard to manage or solve: intractable. Watch out: tractable, easy to manage, means the opposite despite the near-identical spelling.
    Difficulty & Ease
  4. Even in the final weeks of her illness the philosopher remained _____, dictating arguments as clear and well ordered as any she had written in her prime.

    A) inscrutable
    B) lucid
    C) nebulous
    D) turbid
    B) lucid

    Thinking clearly enough to dictate clear, well-ordered arguments is being lucid. Turbid and nebulous both mean cloudy or vague, the reverse of the clarity described.
    Clarity & Obscurity
  5. The museum's founder was so _____ that she refused to heat the galleries in winter, even as frost damaged the paintings she had spent decades collecting.

    A) munificent
    B) parsimonious
    C) profligate
    D) philanthropic
    B) parsimonious

    Refusing to spend even when the refusal ruins one's own collection is extreme stinginess: parsimonious. Munificent and profligate both describe free spending, the opposite of her behavior.
    Money & Morals
  6. The screenplay relies on _____ devices, such as the mysterious stranger, the lost letter and the deathbed confession, that audiences have seen in countless earlier films.

    A) hackneyed
    B) austere
    C) idiosyncratic
    D) perspicuous
    A) hackneyed

    Devices seen in countless earlier films are overused and no longer effective: hackneyed. Idiosyncratic, distinctive and peculiar to one person, is the opposite of stock devices.
    Sameness & Difference

Unlock the whole deck

You are studying a free 6-question sample. All 60 questions of GRE — Practice Questions, the other 8 GRE General Test (Verbal) decks, and spaced-repetition scheduling are built into Willys. 14-day free trial, then $14.99 a year.

Get the app

In Willys, tap Exam Library at the top of your Decks (or Browse Exam Library… under the + button), find the exam on its shelf or by search, tick it and tap Add.

More GRE General Test (Verbal) decks

Set 1Set 2Set 3Set 4Set 5Set 6Set 7Set 8

← All GRE General Test (Verbal) decks, with the study guide and topic outline.

About these cards

Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.

Checked against:

  • Answers and word senses follow the GRE Vocabulary study decks in this folder; this deck's senses and parts of speech were checked against Merriam-Webster.com and the Oxford Learner's and Cambridge dictionaries.

These are independent study notes written for Willys. They are not official exam material, may contain mistakes, and are no substitute for your course, your teacher or the exam owner's own publications. Found an error? Tell us — corrections ship as a new version of the deck.

GRE® is a registered trademark of ETS. This product is not endorsed or approved by ETS.

Use of these pages is covered by our Terms of Use.