Vocabulary College Prep Advanced — Set 3: Practice flashcards
6 of 34 questions free to study here · 10 topics · the whole deck is built into Willys
Thirty-four sentence-completion questions on the Set 3 words: four choices, one blank, context clues that settle it, and why the most tempting wrong answer fails.
Practice deck · part of Vocabulary Level 9 · College Prep Advanced · written against: Our own grade placement (VOCABULARY-PLAN.md): word frequency (wordfreq, CC BY-SA 4.0) and editorial review; no publisher's grade or word list is reproduced. Updated 2026-10-10.
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Aunt Bettina's ______ captions in the family photo album ("Our relaxing beach week: four days of rain and Dad's famous shortcut, only three hours longer") make guests laugh out loud and the relatives pictured wince.
A) mordant
B) ebullient
C) solicitous
D) stiltedA) mordantCharacter & Behavior
Captions that needle the family with biting sarcasm (a "relaxing" beach week with four days of rain, a "famous" shortcut three hours longer) are mordant. Ebullient is tempting because the captions make guests laugh out loud, but ebullient means overflowing with cheerful energy and enthusiasm, and these captions are sarcastic jabs that make the relatives wince. -
At the small airfield's flight school, instructor Gail Novak repeats one rule, "Fly the plane first," in every lesson, hoping to ______ it so deeply that a startled student pilot will follow it without thinking.
A) proffer
B) espouse
C) promulgate
D) inculcateD) inculcateThinking & Knowing
Repeating a rule in every lesson until it takes firm hold in a student's mind is how you inculcate it. Promulgate is tempting because "Fly the plane first" is a rule, but to promulgate is to formally proclaim a law or rule so that it takes effect, or to put an idea into wide circulation; Novak is repeating a rule, not issuing it, and "so deeply" asks for it to take hold in each student's mind, not spread far. -
By building a seven-foot fence around her front yard, Mrs. Lindahl ______ the neighborhood association's rule that front fences stand no higher than four feet, and three warning letters soon followed.
A) quashed
B) usurped
C) contravened
D) annulledC) contravenedActions & Effort
Building a fence higher than the limit acts against the rule: she contravened it. Annulled is tempting as another word for what happens to rules, but to annul is to wipe something out by official ruling, treating it as void, and the warning letters show the rule still stands; Mrs. Lindahl broke it. -
Unable to choose among three students' drafts of the class constitution, Mr. Varga ______ them, keeping the strongest article from each in one final document that all three could sign.
A) amalgamated
B) transmuted
C) debased
D) redoubledA) amalgamatedChange & Growth
Joining the best parts of three drafts into a single document means Mr. Varga amalgamated them. Transmuted is tempting because the drafts are changed, but to transmute is to alter the form or substance of something so it becomes something else entirely, and the drafts' own articles survive in the final version. -
My aunt, a longtime magazine editor, went through my short story in a warm, matter-of-fact voice, with no sarcasm or mockery, and her notes were entirely ______: the first ten pages dragged, the ending made no sense, and she would not pretend otherwise.
A) mordant
B) fulsome
C) oblique
D) unvarnishedD) unvarnishedQuality & Judgment
Notes that name the story's faults plainly, softening nothing, are unvarnished. Mordant is tempting because the verdict is harsh, but mordant means bitingly sarcastic or critical, often with dark humor, and the aunt speaks warmly, with no sarcasm or mockery; she simply says what she thinks. -
The sea floods the mudflats at every high tide and drains away at every low, so the snails and worms that live in this ______ zone must survive hours underwater and hours in open air.
A) liminal
B) peripatetic
C) preternatural
D) antediluvianA) liminalNature & Time
A zone that is under the sea at high tide and open to the air at low lies between two states: it is liminal. Peripatetic is tempting because the water keeps coming and going, but peripatetic means on the move, spending time in one place after another rather than staying put, and the mudflats stay in one place; only the sea comes and goes.
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Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.
Checked against:
- Senses, parts of speech and sense order checked against Merriam-Webster.com, the American Heritage Dictionary and the frequency-ordered Oxford, Longman and Cambridge learner's dictionaries; all definitions, notes and example sentences are original.
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