Vocabulary College Prep Essentials — Set 4: Practice flashcards
6 of 33 questions free to study here · 10 topics · the whole deck is built into Willys
Thirty-three sentence-completion questions on the Set 4 words: four choices, one blank, and why the tempting wrong answer fails.
Practice 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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Mr. Nakashima's ______ streak is well known in the faculty lounge: when his colleagues praise a new school policy, he lists its flaws, and when they criticize one, he rises to defend it.
A) uncritical
B) disinterested
C) situational
D) contrarianD) contrarianCharacter & Behavior
Taking whichever side his colleagues oppose, praise or criticism alike, is a contrarian streak. Situational is tempting because his position shifts with each new situation, but situational means arising from the circumstances at hand, not a general or lasting pattern, and his habit of opposing his colleagues is a lasting streak, well known in the lounge. -
Built for visitors who are blind, the museum's new gallery pairs each painting with a raised copy to touch and a recorded description, so the art reaches them through a ______ other than sight.
A) permutation
B) heuristic
C) modality
D) vantageC) modalityThinking & Knowing
Touch and hearing are modes of sensing, each a modality other than sight. Vantage is tempting because it can mean a way of seeing something, but a vantage is a viewpoint or position, a matter of where or how one looks, not a sense that takes in the art in place of the eyes. -
Because the art room's kiln is only eighteen inches deep, it ______ what the pottery class can fire: tall vases must go to the community studio across town, though bowls, mugs and small figures still fit easily.
A) negates
B) streamlines
C) constrains
D) precludesC) constrainsActions & Effort
A kiln too small for tall pieces constrains what the class can fire, limiting it without stopping it. Precludes is tempting because the tall vases cannot go in, but to preclude is to block something beforehand so that it cannot happen or be done, and the class still fires bowls, mugs and small figures; only the tall pieces go elsewhere. -
Soon after it opened, the town's glass-walled library revealed an ______ drawback: birds kept flying into its windows, so the staff hurried to cover the glass with patterned film.
A) irreducible
B) unanticipated
C) inadvertent
D) indeterminateB) unanticipatedChange & Growth
A drawback no one expected, and so no one had prepared for, is unanticipated. Inadvertent is tempting because no one meant the glass to harm birds, but inadvertent describes something that happens by accident rather than on purpose, and the clues point to surprise rather than to anyone's slip: the problem came to light only after the library opened. -
The student newspaper's style guide is ______ from start to finish, with not a word of explanation: it sets exact lengths for headlines, forbids exclamation points and requires a full name for every person quoted.
A) imprecise
B) formulaic
C) expository
D) prescriptiveD) prescriptiveQuality & Judgment
A guide that sets lengths, forbids and requires lays down rules about what should be done: it is prescriptive. Expository is tempting because a style guide seems meant to inform, but expository writing sets out to make a subject clear to its reader, and this guide explains nothing; every line is an order. -
Passed in 1904, the town's strict ban on building in the floodplain had a clear ______: the spring flood of the year before, which carried off forty riverside homes.
A) corollary
B) bifurcation
C) counterpart
D) antecedentD) antecedentNature & Time
The flood of the year before came first and led to the ban: it is the ban's antecedent. Corollary is tempting because the flood and the ban are closely linked, but a corollary is an outcome that grows naturally out of something, and here the flood came first; the ban is its result.
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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.
- Grade placement is our own, from wordfreq frequency data (CC BY-SA 4.0) and editorial review; no publisher's grade or word list is reproduced.
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