Vocabulary College Prep Essentials — Set 4: In Context flashcards
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Fill the blank: 34 of the Set 4 words, each in a new academic sentence whose clues point to exactly one word.
Learn deck · part of Vocabulary Level 8 · College Prep Essentials · 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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Children of nearsighted parents may inherit a ______ toward nearsightedness, a hidden tendency that long hours indoors can then bring out.predispositionCharacter & Behavior
An inherited tendency waiting for a trigger is a predisposition. Propensity describes how someone is inclined to act, and susceptibility takes "to," not "toward." -
Hegel described history as a ______ in which each idea provokes its opposite and their clash yields a new idea that keeps something of both.dialecticThinking & Knowing
Progress through opposing ideas clashing and being resolved is dialectic. A dichotomy is a fixed split with no clash that yields something new, and "a" rules out interplay. -
Stretching a toddler's growth rate to age forty would predict a giant, which is why scientists who ______ beyond their data must say how far the trend holds.extrapolateThinking & Knowing
Extending a measured trend past the measured range is extrapolating. Theorize means building an explanation, not stretching a trend line forward. -
Few places ______ the New England mill town better than this one: a river to power the machines, a mill beside it and rows of identical brick boarding houses where the workers lived.exemplifySpeaking & Arguing
The town has every standard feature, so it is the textbook case of a mill town. Embody suits an idea or quality, such as courage, rather than a kind of town. -
In seven words, "The ice is leaving faster than predicted," the scientist managed to ______ forty years of glacier research for a reporter who wanted one sentence.encapsulateSpeaking & Arguing
Putting forty years of work into seven words expresses its essence briefly. Crystallize means making an idea clear and definite, not summing it up in few words. -
The bank traced the overpayment to an ______ slip by a hurried clerk, who carelessly typed an extra zero and sent a supplier $40,000 instead of $4,000.inadvertentActions & Effort
A careless slip made without meaning to is inadvertent. Only inadvertent carries the carelessness the clue describes; unintended means not meant and usually describes a result, such as a side effect, rather than the careless act. -
To ______ a matrix, a mathematician swaps its rows and columns, so that the first row becomes the first column, and so on.transposeChange & Growth
Swapping rows and columns is transposing a matrix. Inverse names a different matrix, one that undoes the original, and it is a noun, not a verb. -
The job of a lighthouse keeper was more ______ than it looked: besides tending the lamp each night, keepers recorded the weather, painted and repaired the tower, and helped rescue sailors in trouble.multifacetedSize & Amount
A job made up of many varied duties is multifaceted. Interdisciplinary would combine academic fields, and a keeper's duties are tasks, not fields of study. -
Cataracts increase the ______ of the eye's lens, so less light reaches the retina and vision grows cloudy.opacityQuality & Judgment
A lens that blocks more light has greater opacity, and cataracts cause exactly that. Asymmetry would be a lack of balance, not a loss of clearness. -
During hard exercise, the body works to ______ blood flow, shifting much of what the stomach and intestines received at rest to the working muscles.redistributeSociety & Power
Moving blood from the gut to the muscles reshuffles which organs get how much of it. Allocate would describe a first sharing out, not a shift away from where the blood was going, and modulate would only turn the overall flow up or down.
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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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