GRE - April words

APRIL WORDS - updated every day

1. Sybarite
2. Agog - highly excited
3. Piquancy
4. Demurral
5. Pomp - splendid display,splendor ,Cheap or pretentious or vain display, Ceremonial elegance and splendor; Syn - gaudery
6. Zealot - excessive enthusiasm or u can say excessive zeal; or fanatic
7. Audacious - daring ;bold
8. Erudite - learned person;or knowledgeable person
9. Contentious - quarrelsome
10. Unction - anointing with oil in a religious fashion sanction; Excessive but superficial compliments given with affected charm, Smug self-serving earnestness; Syn - balm, ointment,approval by custom or tradition-penalty for disobeying law
11. Boor
12. Caucus
13. Pugnacious
14. Augury
15. Reculsive - hermit or a loner; withdrawn from society; seeking solitude, providing privacy or seclusion
16. Prostrate - render helpless or defenseless
17. Tactile - of the sense touch; of or relating to or proceeding from the sense of touch, Producing a sensation of touch
18. Contrite - feeling or expressing pain or sorrow for sins or offenses, Feeling regret for a fault or offence
19. Tandem - an arrangement of two or more objects or persons one behind another, A bicycle with two sets of pedals and two seats
20. Rhapsodize - to express oneself in an immoderately enthusiastic manner.
21. Overtly - in an overt manner,overt; Open and observable; not secret or hidden; Syn - open
22. Alacrity
23. Tactic - a plan for attaining a particular goal; Syn - maneuver
24. Rebel - a person who takes part in an armed rebellion against the constituted authority (especially in the hope of improving conditions), Someone who exhibits great independence in thought and action; Syn - arise, maverick
25. Innocuos - harmless
26. Demigrade
27. Exactness - very accurate or demanding
28. Compliance - obliging
29. Profligate
30. Extol
31. Penitent
32. Vigorate
33. Unsubstantial
34. Truculent
35. Infallible
36. Stalwart
37. Disavowal
38. Oblivious
39. Dandy
40. Complaisant
41. Preeminence
42. Aggrandize
43. Slipshot
44. Bauble - a toy or showy worthless trinket
45. Disavowing - disclaim knowledge for or responsiblity
46. Avarice
47. Pusillanimous - cowardly
48. Secular - not concerned with religion; Someone who is not a clergyman or a professional person
49. Grateful - Feeling or showing gratitude, affording comfort or pleasure
50. Disabuse - free from a mistaken idea
51. Deluge
52. Obstinacy - stubborn; firm about opinion
53. Rescind - abrogate,revoke or cancel; annul by recalling or rescinding
54. Fertile - relating to soil or abundant; capable of reproducing, intellectually productive, bearing in abundance especially offspring; Syn - prolific, fecund
55. Metamorphisis - in a changing state
56. Exacerbate - worse
57. Amalgamation - unite
58. Aver - state confidently
59. Prevaricate - misleading or equivoacte
60. Synopsis - summary or outline
61. Fiasco - complete failure or breakdown; a sudden and violent collapse
62. Tenacity - firmness or persistence
63. Impertinent - insolent,disrespectful
64. Nave - central part of the church
65. Dab - a light touch or stroke, a small quantity of something moist or liquid;Antonyms: glob, mass
66. Rapport - relationship or communication
67. Disalliviate
68. Rebel
69. Elf - below 3 kilohertz; Synonym - extremely low frequency. Extremely Low Frequency) Electromagnetic radiation in the 30 to 300 Hz range. Electric power lines and electrical appliances emit radiation in this range. See low radiation.
Antonym would be HIGH
70. Exacerbatae - Meaning #1: make worse - Synonyms: worsen, aggravate, exasperate Meaning #2: exasperate or irritate - Synonyms: exasperate, aggra; Antonyms - aid, calm, comfort, help, soothe
71. Allure
72. Obtain
73. Cascade
74. Vitriolic - similar to as in "tarnishing an image"
75. Flagging - drooping
76. Bland - was in one of the options and not the right option]
77. Unscrupulous
78. Ameliorate
79. Secular - Someone who is not a clergyman or a professional person; Syn -layman, profane
80. Eradicate - Kill in large numbers, Destroy completely; Syn - annihilate, eliminate, extirpate
81. Rash - A series of unexpected and unpleasant occurrences, Imprudently incurring risk; Syn - blizzard, foolhardy, reckless, heady
82. Contentious - Inclined or showing an inclination to dispute or disagree, even to engage in law suits, Involving or likely to cause controversy; Syn - combative, disputatious, disputative
83. Sanction - Formal and explicit approval, Official permission or approval, The act of final authorization; Syn - approve, authorization, endorsement
84. Parsimonious - Excessively unwilling to spend; Syn - penurious
85. Mneumonic
86. Prosaic - dull, unimaginative
87. Labyrinth
88. Remiss
89. Garrulous
90. Trail
91. Palter
92. Hubris
93. Discommode
94. Vim
95. Strut
96. Entrench
97. Drudgery
98. Cower
99. Mendacious
100. Tantamount
101. Deftness
102. Favor
103. Mulish - Stubborn and intractable; recalcitrant; unreasonably rigid in the face of argument or entreaty or attack
104. Gall
105. Laze
106. Inveigle
107. Recondite
108. Martial
109. Pacific
110. Abstruse
111. Lionize
112. Callous
113. Lethargic
114. Pugnacious
115. Mendacious
116. Digression
117. Erratic
118. Unbriddler
119. Torpor
120. Imbue
121. Lassitude
122. Xerophagy - dry eating or fasting
123. Rebuff - unkind refusal or rejection; snub
124. Tawdry - showy or gaudy but without real value
125. Plague
126. Averse
127. Captitulate
128. Balky
129. Dauntless - bold
130. Obsequious - servile, slavish
131. Sinecure
132. Gaffe
133. Repose
134. Supercillious
135. Grave
136. Coherence
137. Disjointed


ANALOGIES:

1. lost:location
2. naive:guile
3. critise:libel
4. testy:annoy
5. tireless:fatigued
6. burqueness:tactful
7. rent:apartment
8. glacial:snow
9. garrulous:tacit
10. glasses:see :: cane:walk
11. hasty:tardy
12. fretork::ornamentation
13. lessen:eliminate
14. game:stadium
15. carpenter:craft
16. spectacles:see
17. meander:river
18. stick:walk
19. glove:feel
20. heal:ill
21. freeze:fixed
22. game:playground
23. culpable:confession
24. lessen:eradicate
25. badge:sherrif
26. seal:signatory
27. driver:license
28. manufacturer:trademark
29. cloth:ragged
30. renold:shape
31. blandishment:coax::equivocate:mislead
32. trenchant:insipid
33. aphoristic:terse
34. freeze:fixed::soil:unclean
35. naive:guile
36. ungovernable:manage
37. heaven:dangerous
38. agile:movement
39.

ISSUE TOPICS:

1. Do people place too much emphasis on role models.
2. Nonmainstream areas like future - teling, physo,..is playing a vital role in satisfying human needs that is done by mainstream sciences.
3. Rituals and ceremonies define culture. people lacking these have a difficulty in identifying themselves.
4. About laws..there are two types of laws just and unjust, depends on us which one we adhere to.
5. Prizes like Nobel and Academy do more harm than good in appreciating the individual performance.
6. Greatness of people can be appreciated only by people who live after them, and not contemporaries.
7. Television should show government at work. It should focus on the debates, trials and meetings regarding the issues of the society. This kind of forecasting live government proceedings will benefit the people
8. Criterion for giving priority to any research should be that it should be for masses
9. Purpose of education is to free the mind and souls or to restrain them
10. Law should not be rigid. Laws should be flexible as per circumstances.
11. Art has got more impact in creating values of society rather than criticism
12. Human mind is more superior than the machines
13. Tradition and modernization are incompatible.
14. We have been taught that loyalty is virtue- but mostly it is destructive rather than being a positive force.
15. It is sometimes necessary, even desirable for political leaders to withhold information from the public
16. When research priorities are being set for science, education, or any other area, the most important question to consider is: How many people's lives will be improved if the results are successful?
17. Children of today are responsible for the destiny of society.
18. In today's new and complex world , an understanding of the past is of little value.
19. In order to improve the quality of instruction at the collegeand university level, all faculty should be required to spendtime working outside the academic world in professionsrelevant to the courses they teach
20. Although many people think that the luxuries and conveniences of contemporary life are entirely harmless, in fact, they actually prevent people from developing into truly strong and independent individuals
21. Students must have certain skepticism about what they study.They must question what they are learning and must not accept it passively
22. An individual is identified with the social group to which he belongs


RC PASSAGES - from Big book that appeared on the exam

Passage - 1

No very satisfactory account of the mechanism that caused the formation of the ocean basins has yet been given. The traditional view supposes that the upper mantle of the earth behaves as a
liquid when it is subjected to small forces for long periods and that differences in temperature under oceans and continents are sufficient to produce convection in the mantle of the earth
with rising convection currents under the mid-ocean ridges and sinking currents under the con-tinents. Theoretically, this convection would carry the continental plates along as though they
were on a conveyor belt and would provide the forces needed to produce the split that occurs along the ridge. This view may be correct: it has the advantage that the currents are driven by
temperature differences that themselves depend on the position of the continents. Such a back-coupling, in which the position of the moving plate has an impact on the forces that move it,could produce complicated and varying motions.On the other hand, the theory is implausible because convection does not normally occur along lines. and it certainly does not occur along lines broken by frequent offsets or changes in direction, as the ridge is. Also it is difficult to see how the theory applies to the plate between the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the ridge in the Indian Ocean. This plate is growing on both sides, and since there is no intermediate trench, the two ridges must be moving apart. It would be odd if the rising convection currents kept exact pace with them. An alternative theory is that the sinking part of the plate, which is denser than the hotter surrounding mantle, pulls the rest of the
plate after it. Again it is difficult to see how this applies to the ridge in the South Atlantic, where
neither the African nor the American plate has a
sinking part.Another possibility is that sinking plate cools the neighboring mantle and produces con-vection currents that move the plates. This last theory is attractive because it gives some hope of explaining the enclosed seas, such as the Sea of Japan. These seas have a typical oceanic floor,except that the floor is overlaid by several kilo-meters of sediment. Their floors have probably been sinking for long periods. It seems possible that a sinking current of cooled mantle material
on the upper side of the plate might be the cause of such deep basins. The enclosed seas are an important feature of the earth's surface, and seriously require explanation in because, addition to the enclosed seas that are developing at present behind island arcs, there are a number of older ones of possibly similar origin, such as the Gulf of Mexico, the Black Sea, and perhaps the North Sea.

1. According to the traditional view of the origin of the ocean basins, which of the following is sufficient to move the continental plates?
(A) Increases in sedimentation on ocean floors
(B) Spreading of ocean trenches
(C) Movement of mid-ocean ridges
(D) Sinking of ocean basins
(E) Differences in temperature under oceans and continents
ANS - E
2. It can be inferred from the passage that, of the following, them deepest sediments would be found in the
(A) Indian Ocean
(B) Black Sea
(C) Mid-Atlantic
(D) South Atlantic
(E) Pacific
ANS - B
3. The author refers to a "conveyor belt " in line 13 in order to
(A) illustrate the effects of convection in the mantle
(B) show how temperature differences depend on the positions of the continents
(C) demonstrate the linear nature of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
(D) describe the complicated motions made possible by back-coupling
(E) account for the rising currents under certain mid-ocean ridges
ANS - A

Passage - 2

RC Passage - Passage 1
The use of heat pumps has been held back
largely by skepticism about advertisers' claims that
heat pumps can provide as many as two units of
thermal energy for each unit of electrical energy
(5) used, thus apparently contradicting the principle of
energy conservation.
Heat pumps circulate a fluid refrigerant that
cycles alternatively from its liquid phase to its
vapor phase in a closed loop. The refrigerant,
(10) starting as a low-temperature, low-pressure vapor,
enters a compressor driven by an electric motor.
The refrigerant leaves the compressor as a hot,
dense vapor and flows through a heat exchanger
called the condenser, which transfers heat from the
(15) refrigerant to a body of air. Now the refrigerant,
as a high-pressure, cooled liquid, confronts a flow
restriction which causes the pressure to drop. As
the pressure falls, the refrigerant expands and par-
tially vaporizes, becoming chilled. It then passes
(20) through a second heat exchanger, the evaporator,
which transfers heat from the air to the refrigerant,
reducing the temperature of this second body of
air. Of the two heat exchangers, one is located
inside, and the other one outside the house, so
(25) each is in contact with a different body of air:
room air and outside air, respectively.
The flow direction of refrigerant through a heat
pump is controlled by valves. When the refrigerant
flow is reversed, the heat exchangers switch func-
(30) tion. This flow-reversal capability allows heat
pumps either to heat or cool room air.
Now, if under certain conditions a heat pump
puts out more thermal energy than it consumes in
electrical energy, has the law of energy conserva-
(35) tion been challenged? No, not even remotely: the
additional input of thermal energy into the circu-
lating refrigerant via the evaporator accounts for
the difference in the energy equation.
Unfortunately, there is one real problem. The
(40) heating capacity of a heat pump decreases as the
outdoor temperature falls. The drop in capacity is
caused by the lessening amount of refrigerant mass
moved through the compressor at one time. The
heating capacity is proportional to this mass flow
(45) rate: the less the mass of refrigerant being com-
pressed, the less the thermal load it can transfer
through the heat-pump cycle. The volume flow
rate of refrigerant vapor through the single-speed
rotary compressor used in heat pumps is approxi-
(50) mately constant. But cold refrigerant vapor enter-
ing a compressor is at lower pressure than warmer
vapor. Therefore, the mass of cold refrigerant-
and thus the thermal energy it carries-is less than
if the refrigerant vapor were warmer before com-
(55) pression.
Here, then, lies a genuine drawback of heat
pumps: in extremely cold climates-where the
most heat is needed-heat pumps are least able to
supply enough heat.

1. The primary purpose of the passage is to
(A) explain the differences in the working of a heat pump when the outdoor temperature changes
(B) contrast the heating and the cooling modes of heat pumps
(C) describe heat pumps, their use, and factors affecting their use
(D) advocate the more widespread use of heat pumps
(E) expose extravagant claims about heat pumps as false

2. The author resolves the question of whether heat pumps run counter to the principle of energy conservation by
(A) carefully qualifying the meaning of that principle
(B) pointing out a factual error in the statement that gives rise to this question
(C) supplying additional relevant facts
(D) denying the relevance of that principle to heat pumps
(E) explaining that heat pumps can cool, as well as heat, room air

3. It can be inferred from the passage that, in the course of a heating season, the heating capacity of a heat pump is greatest when
(A) heating is least essential
(B) electricity rates are lowest
(C) its compressor runs the fastest
(D) outdoor temperatures hold steady
(E) the heating demand surges

4. If the author's assessment of the use of heat pumps(lines 1-6) is correct, which of the following best expresses the lesson that advertisers should learn from this case?
(A) Do not make exaggerated claims about the products you are trying to promote.
(B) Focus your advertising campaign on vague analogies and veiled implications instead of on facts.
(C) Do not use facts in your advertising that willstrain the prospective client's ability to believe.
(D) Do not assume in your advertising that the prospective clients know even the most elementary scientific principles. (E) Concentrate your advertising firmly on financially relevant issues such as price discounts and efficiency of operation.

5. The passage suggests that heat pumps would be used more widely if
(A) they could also be used as air conditioners
(B) they could be moved around to supply heat where it is most needed
(C) their heat output could be thermo-statically controlled
(D) models with truly superior cooling capacity were advertised more effectively
(E) people appreciated the role of the evaporator in the energy equation

6. According to the passage, the role of the flow restriction (lines 16-17) in a heat pump is to
(A) measure accurately the flow rate of the refrigerant mass at that point
(B) compress and heat the refrigerant vapor
(C) bring about the evaporation and cooling of refrigerant
(D) exchange heat between the refrigerant and the air at that point
(E) reverse the direction of refrigerant flow when needed

7. The author regards the notion that heat pumps have a genuine drawback as a
(A) cause for regret
(B) sign of premature defeatism
(C) welcome challenge
(D) case of sloppy thinking
(E) focus for an educational campaign