GRE - Week 3

Vocabulary Words

1. Dissent (Verb)
 Meaning: To disagree; to withhold assent.
 Example: “You have that right, as you know. The right to dissent is one
of our most important freedoms here. “But the meeting is in four days.

2. Dissipate (Verb)
 Meaning: To drive away, disperse.
 Example: A state court issued an injunction, and the mob eventually
dissipated.

3. Dissolution (Noun)
 Meaning: Disintegration, or decomposition into fragments.
 Example: My life has been for many years in a process of dissolution
and it seems to me that now, finally, it is time for me to do the honorable
thing.

4. Dissonance (Noun)
 Meaning: A state of disagreement or conflict.
 Example: “There is a limit to their tolerance for dissonance,” she added.

5. Distaff (Adjective)
 Meaning: Of, relating to, or characteristic of women.
 Example: Actually, I do see the merits of a distaff leader, assuming she’s
the candidate who most closely represents what’s best for the country.

6. Distend (Verb)
 Meaning: To extend; to stretch out; to spread out.
 Example: The next morning, we found, near the bowl, a stiff, hairy rat
with a distended belly.

7. Distill (Verb)
 Meaning: To extract the essence of; concentrate; purify.
 Example: The long years of solitude and unhappiness had distilled her
emotions and purified her feelings down to a few terrible, magnificent
passions, which possessed her totally.

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8. Dither (Verb)
 Meaning: To be uncertain or unable to make a decision about doing
something.
 Example: He irritated Strauss by dithering over the offer for months
without replying.

9. Diurnal (Adjective)
 Meaning: Happening or occurring during daylight, or primarily active
during that time.
 Example: Most birds are diurnal.

10. Diverge (Verb)

 Meaning: To become different; to run apart; to separate; to tend into
different directions.
 Example: Both stories start out the same way, but they diverge halfway
through.

11. Divest (Verb)

 Meaning: To sell off or be rid of through sale, especially of a subsidiary.
 Example: In 2016, Glasgow becomes the first university in Europe to
divest from fossil fuels.

12. Divine (Verb)

 Meaning: To guess or discover (something) through intuition or insight.
 Example: He claimed he could divine underground water.

13. Docile (Adjective)

 Meaning: Yielding to control or supervision, direction, or management.
 Example: Lee thought: docile men do not make good soldiers.

14. Doctrinaire (Adjective)

 Meaning: Stubbornly holding on to an idea without concern for
practicalities or reality.
 Example: His socialism was instinctive, never dogmatic or doctrinaire –
it was the wisdom of common sense.

15. Document (Verb)

 Meaning: To record in documents.
 Example: He documented each step of the process as he did it, which
was good when the investigation occurred.

16. Doff (Verb)

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  Meaning: To remove or take off (something such as clothing).
 Example: She had doffed the shirt and Bermuda-shorts which she had
been wearing and was now dressed for her journey home.

17. Dormant (Adjective)

 Meaning: Inactive, sleeping, asleep, suspended.
 Example: The bank account was dormant; there had been no
transactions in months.

18. Dovetail (Verb)

 Meaning: To fit together well.
 Example: The parts of your essay should dovetail so that it is cohesive
and coherent.

19. Droll (Adjective)

 Meaning: Oddly humorous; whimsical, amusing in a quaint way;
waggish.
 Example: Mr. Attenborough’s distinguished voice describes the action
with a droll understatement.

20. Dubious (Adjective)

 Meaning: Arousing doubt; questionable; open to suspicion.
 Example: After he made some dubious claims about the company, fewer
people trusted him.

21. Dupe (Verb)

 Meaning: To swindle, deceive, or trick.
 Example: She knew how he felt, but it didn’t matter very much—she
wanted Carl to know what was up, how he was being duped.

22. Duplicity (Noun)

 Meaning: Intentional deceptiveness; double-dealing.
 Example: I’m hypersensitive to negativity and duplicity and I want to
push it away by writing comedy.

23. Duress (Noun)

 Meaning: Harsh treatment.
 Example: Despite his controversial interview with Caesar, many ask
about Peeta, assure me that they know he was speaking under duress.

24. Dyspeptic (Adjective)

 Meaning: Irritable or morose.

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  Example: Even at the best of times, Tefu was a difficult fellow:
dyspeptic, argumentative, overbearing.

25. Ebullient (Adjective)

 Meaning: Enthusiastic; high-spirited.
 Example: Her ebullient personality matches that of a perpetual
overachiever.

26. Eccentric (Adjective)

 Meaning: Deviating from the norm; behaving unexpectedly or
differently; unconventional and slightly strange.
 Example: We found out much later in life that he was bipolar, but before
that we just thought he was eccentric.

27. Echelon (Noun)

 Meaning: A level or rank in an organization, profession, or society.
 Example: I should remind you that my family is long-established in the
upper echelons of the British aristocracy.

28. Eclectic (Adjective)

 Meaning: Selecting a mixture of what appears to be best of various
doctrines, methods or styles.
 Example: He’d spent most of his childhood inside, reading the eclectic
books in his mother’s library.

29. Eclipse (Verb)

 Meaning: To overshadow; to be better or more noticeable than.
 Example: Her past, she fears, is eclipsing her present.

30. Edify (Verb)

 Meaning: To instruct or improve morally or intellectually.
 Example: Edward’s pictures of a bygone era offer an edifying measure
of our own cultural progress.

31. Efficacy (Noun)

 Meaning: Degree of ability to produce a desired effect.
 Example: There is limited scientific evidence on the efficacy of using
mindfulness to moderate drinking behaviors.

32. Effigy (Noun)

 Meaning: A dummy or other crude representation of a person, group or
object that is hated.

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  Example: Students had gathered on the hockey field nearby, burning
paper effigies of the Principal around a glowing bonfire; the smoke
curled into the night air and mixed with their laughter and chatter.

33. Effrontery (Noun)

 Meaning: An act of insolent and shameless audacity.
 Example: Any refusal to salute the president shall be counted as an
effrontery.

34. Egalitarian (Adjective)

 Meaning: Characterized by social equality and equal rights for all
people.
 Example: Hunter-gatherer societies tend to be relatively egalitarian, to
lack full-time bureaucrats and hereditary chiefs, and to have small-scale
political organization at the level of the band or tribe.

35. Egregious (Adjective)

 Meaning: Outrageously bad; shocking.
 Example: It was only when I had children, over a decade later, that I
realized what an egregious blunder that was.

36. Egress (Noun)

 Meaning: An exit or way out.
 Example: The window provides an egress in the event of an emergency.

37. Elated (Verb)

 Meaning: Extremely happy and excited; delighted; pleased, euphoric.
 Example: She was elated with her new car.

38. Elegy (Noun)

 Meaning: A mournful or plaintive poem; a funeral song; a poem of
lamentation.
 Example: “Dear Basketball” is part elegy, part love letter, and Williams
composed a bittersweet melody that swiftly runs through a range of
emotions.

39. Elevated (Adjective)

 Meaning: Increased, particularly above a normal level.
 Example: The patient presented with elevated blood pressure.

40. Elicit (Verb)

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  Meaning: To draw out, bring out; to obtain information from someone
or something.
 Example: Somehow, this remark did not elicit the dramatic response I
expected.

41. Eloquent (Adjective)

 Meaning: Fluently persuasive and articulate.
 Example: Malcolm delivered his talk in his unique style of eloquent
fury.

42. Elusive (Adjective)

 Meaning: Evading capture, comprehension or remembrance.
 Example: The elusive criminal was arrested.

43. Emaciated (Adjective)

 Meaning: Thin or haggard, especially from hunger or disease.
 Example: The emaciated prisoners in the death camps were weak and
sickly.

44. Embellish (Verb)

 Meaning: To make more beautiful and attractive by adding
ornamentation; to decorate.
 Example: The old book cover was embellished with golden letters.

45. Eminent (Adjective)

 Meaning: Noteworthy, remarkable, distinguished, great.
 Example: In later years, the professor became known as an eminent
historian.

46. Empirical (Adjective)

 Meaning: Pertaining to, derived from, or testable by observations made
using the physical senses or using instruments.
 Example: Kepler’s laws were empirical, based upon the painstaking
observations of Tycho Brahe.

47. Emulate (Verb)

 Meaning: To copy or imitate, especially a person.
 Example: He is continually amazed by how much Maxine emulates her
parents, how much she respects their tastes and their ways.

48. Enamor (Noun)

 Meaning: To Captivate, attract.

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  Example: He was the romantic type and instantly became enamored
with his friend’s sister.

49. Enchanted (Adjective)

 Meaning: Charmed, delighted, enraptured.
 Example: At a gas station, Vivian enchanted a random woman to take
us home with her.

50. Encomium (Noun)

 Meaning: Warm praise, especially a formal expression of such praise; a
tribute.
 Example: Obama's encomiums to Reagan were so effusive and
consistent that Douglas Brinkley, the popular historian and editor of
Reagan's diaries, posited that Reagan was Obama's "role model."

51. Encumber (Verb)

 Meaning: To restrict or block something with a hindrance or
impediment.
 Example: Uncomfortable clothing, with tight bodices and sleeves that
encumbered the hands, was considered a status symbol.

52. Endemic (Adjective)

 Meaning: (especially of diseases) Prevalent in a particular area or region.
 Example: Malaria is endemic to the tropics.

53. Enervate (Verb)

 Meaning: To weaken morally or mentally.
Example: After being laid off three times in a row, she felt too enervated
to look for another job.

54. Engender (Verb)

 Meaning: To give existence to, to produce.
 Example: Reggie has engendered respect, even from those who once
fought him.

55. Enhance (Verb)

 Meaning: To augment or make something greater.
 Example: A hereditary monarch relies on pomp and ceremony, which
enhance the respect for the institution.

56. Enigma (Noun)

 Meaning: Something or someone puzzling, mysterious or inexplicable.

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  Example: The microwave oven was an enigma: We wondered how it
cooked food, since it didn’t grill or fry.

57. Entitlement (Noun)

 Meaning: The right to have something, whether actual or perceived.
 Example: Hillary has many flaws, but the greatest one was perhaps her
often communicated sense of entitlement.

58. Entrenched (Verb)

 Meaning: Established firmly and securely.
 Example: Many of these rules have become entrenched in a vast
community of English speakers, who respect the rules without ever
having to think about them.

59. Enumerate (Verb)

 Meaning: To specify each member of a sequence individually in
incrementing order.
 Example: I spent the remainder of the meeting enumerating complaints
about our diet, work, and studying.

60. Epicure (Noun)

 Meaning: A person who takes particular pleasure in fine food and drink.
 Example: Snails are in high favor with French epicures, and immense
numbers of these mollusks are eaten in Paris.

61. Ephemeral (Adjective)

 Meaning: Something which lasts for a short period of time.
 Example: To be in the mainstream is ephemeral," she says, "because
what is mainstream is constantly changing.

62. Epiphany (Noun)

 Meaning: An illuminating realization or discovery, often resulting in a
personal feeling of elation, awe, or wonder.
 Example: It came to her in an epiphany what her life's work was to be.

63. Equanimity (Noun)

 Meaning: The state of being calm, stable and composed, especially under
stress.
 Example: Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity
opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment.

64. Equitable (Adjective)

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  Meaning: Fair, just, or impartial.
 Example: Castro promised a more equitable society based on
communist principles.

65. Equivocate (Verb)

 Meaning: To speak using double meaning; to speak ambiguously,
unclearly or doubtfully, with intent to deceive.
 Example: All that Garnet had to say for him was that he supposed he
meant to equivocate.

66. Erratic (Adjective)

 Meaning: Unsteady, random; prone to unexpected changes; not
consistent.
 Example: Henry has been getting erratic scores on his tests: 40% last
week, but 98% this week.

67. Erroneous (Adjective)

 Meaning: Containing an error; inaccurate.
 Example: His answer to the sum was erroneous.

68. Ersatz (Noun)

 Meaning: made in imitation; artificial, especially of a poor quality.
 Example: Back then, we could only get ersatz coffee.

69. Erstwhile (Adjective)

 Meaning: Former, previous.
 Example: Charles Howard, owner of three erstwhile unsaleable
automobiles, was suddenly the richest man in town.

70. Erudite (Adjective)

 Meaning: Learned, scholarly, with emphasis on knowledge gained from
books.
 Example: Woodrow Wilson, the erudite president of Princeton with a
doctorate in political science, was followed into office by Warren
Harding, who was just smart enough to know he was a dimwit.

71. Eschew (Verb)

 Meaning: To avoid; to shun, to shy away from an idea or concept.
 Example: I eschew the idea of plugging in my laptop to take notes and
resort to old-fashioned pen and paper instead, so that I can enjoy more
of the view and not be distracted by bashing a keyboard.

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72. Esoteric (Adjective)
 Meaning: Intended for or likely to be understood by only a small
number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest, or an
enlightened inner circle.
 Example: The writing in this manual is very esoteric; I’d need a degree
in engineering just to understand it!

73. Estimable (Adjective)

 Meaning: Worthy of esteem; admirable.
 Example: Organized by the estimable Bata Shoe Museum of Toronto
with the American Federation of Arts in New York, the exhibition
promises nearly 150 examples of this indispensable item.

74. Eulogy (Noun)

 Meaning: An oration to honor a deceased person, usually at a funeral.
 Example: The next day, Wednesday, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
delivered the eulogy for Addie, Denise, and Cynthia at a joint funeral.

75. Ethos (Noun)

 Meaning: The character or fundamental values of a person, people,
culture, or movement.
 Example: Our current cultural ethos is that achieving happiness is like
achieving other goals.

76. Euphemism (Noun)

 Meaning: The use of a word or phrase to replace another with one that
is considered less offensive, blunt or vulgar than the word or phrase
which it replaces.
 Example: The movie is to be commended for using the word “abortion”
rather than a euphemism.

77. Euphony (Noun)

 Meaning: A pronunciation of letters and syllables which is pleasing to
the ear.
 Example: When I hear you speak, I hear beautiful euphony.

78. Euphoria (Noun)

 Meaning: An excited state of joy; a feeling of intense happiness.
 Example: The runner was in a state of absolute euphoria after winning
his first marathon.

79. Evanescent (Adjective)

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  Meaning: Disappearing, vanishing.
 Example: While a still image proclaims permanence, a moving image is
evanescent.

80. Evasive (Adjective)

 Meaning: Tending to avoid speaking openly or making revelations
about oneself.
 Example: Marsha didn't trust the woman and was evasive when she
made inquiries.

81. Evenhanded (Adjective)

 Meaning: Fair and having no partiality; unbiased; just.
 Example: Mr. Porterfield’s evenhanded direction doesn’t try to pull the
viewer’s sympathies one way or another.

82. Exacerbate (Verb)

 Meaning: To make worse (a problem, bad situation, negative feeling,
etc.); aggravate; exasperate.
 Example: The proposed shutdown would exacerbate unemployment
problems.

83. Exacting (Adjective)

 Meaning: Making excessive demands; difficult to satisfy.
 Example: His exacting taste required no small degree of outward
perfection.

84. Exasperated (Adjective)

 Meaning: Irked, frustrated, vexed, provoked, annoyed; made angry.
 Example: “What do you want from me?” he yelled at her in whining and
exasperated confusion.

85. Excoriate (Verb)

 Meaning: To strongly denounce or censure.
 Example: In 2001 he excoriated Mr. Kissinger, the secretary of state in
the Nixon administration, as a war criminal in the book “The Trial of
Henry Kissinger.”

86. Excruciating (Adjective)

 Meaning: Exceedingly intense; extreme; very painful.
 Example: The pain was excruciating, and it clawed through my stomach
and up my spine.

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87. Exculpate (Verb)
 Meaning: To clear of or to free from guilt; exonerate.
 Example: “The president was not exculpated for the acts that he
allegedly committed,” Mueller said.

88. Exemplify (Verb)

 Meaning: To be an instance of or serve as an example.
 Example: To what extent does his abominable behaviour exemplify the
attitude of the present American administration?

89. Exhaustive (Adjective)

 Meaning: Fully comprehensive.
 Example: The president of the republic sent him a telegram of
condolence in which he promised an exhaustive investigation and paid
homage to the dead men.

90. Exigent (Adjective)

 Meaning: Urgent; pressing; needing immediate action.
 Example: Depression is a perfectly legitimate subject for fiction, of
course, and God knows it’s an exigent aspect of modern life.

91. Exonerate (Verb)

 Meaning: To free someone from accusation or blame.
 Example: These shooters were investigated, exonerated, and promptly
returned to the streets, where, so emboldened, they shot again.

92. Expedient (Adjective)

 Meaning: Suitable to effect some desired end; Affording short-term
benefit, often at the expense of the long-term.
 Example: Once again, two paths had opened before me, and I could take
the expedient one, or the one that required courage.

93. Explicit (Adjective)

 Meaning: Very specific, clear, or detailed.
 Example: I gave explicit instructions for him to stay here, but he
followed me, anyway.

94. Exponent (Noun)

 Meaning: One who expounds, represents or advocates.
 Example: Army Brew is one of the leading exponents of hard rock in
Venezuela.

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95. Expound (Verb)
 Meaning: To set out the meaning of; to explain or discuss at length
 Example: He expounded often on the dangers of the imperial
presidency.

96. Expunge (Verb)

 Meaning: To erase or strike out.
 Example: Before driving them back to their hotel, officers explained that
their criminal record would be expunged when they were 17.

97. Expurgate (Verb)

 Meaning: To edit out (incorrect, offensive, or otherwise undesirable
information) from a book or other publication; to cleanse; to purge.
 Example: The publisher decided to expurgate the love scene from the
book, to make it more child-friendly.

98. Extant (Adjective)

 Meaning: Still alive; not extinct.
 Example: He instantly recognized that the bones did not belong to any
extant species and hence must be very old.

99. Extemporaneous (Adjective)

 Meaning: With inadequate preparation or without advance thought;
offhand.
 Example: Their dialogue sounds extemporaneous, their monologues
genuine and heartfelt.

100. Extraneous (Adjective)

 Meaning: Not belonging to, or dependent upon, a thing; without or
beyond a thing; foreign
 Example: Extraneous substances were found on my cup of water.

101. Extrapolate (Verb)

 Meaning: To infer by extending known information.
 Example: He warned against extrapolating the mouse study to humans.

102. Facetious (Adjective)

 Meaning: Treating serious issues with (often deliberately) inappropriate
humour; flippant.
 Example: Robbie's joke about Heather's appearance was just him being
facetious.

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103. Facile (Adjective)
 Meaning: Amiable, flexible, easy to get along with; Lazy, simplistic
(especially of explanations, discussions etc.).
 Example: His facile disposition made him many friends.

104. Facilitate (Verb)

 Meaning: To make easy or easier.
 Example: The indictment charged eleven of us with complicity in over
two hundred acts of sabotage aimed at facilitating violent revolution
and an armed invasion of the country.

105. Faction (Noun)

 Meaning: A group of people, especially within a political organization,
which expresses a shared belief or opinion different from people who
are not part of the group.
 Example: The group divided into two roughly equal factions.

106. Factitious (Adjective)

 Meaning: Counterfeit, fabricated, fake.
 Example: Whatever unjust barriers or factitious discrimination there
may be against any must be abolished, and equality must be for all.

107. Fallacious (Adjective)

 Meaning: Characterized by fallacy; false or mistaken.
 Example: The beef association said it was fallacious to draw a link
between beef consumption and automobile emissions.

108. Fallow (Adjective)

 Meaning: Inactive; undeveloped.
 Example: This would turn out to be true, but in the fallow days of late
1956 and early 1957, Livermore’s future looked bleak.

109. Fanatical (Adjective)

 Meaning: Having an extreme, irrational zeal or enthusiasm for a specific
cause.
 Example: I had become a fanatical bird-watcher by the age of seven.

110. Fanciful (Adjective)

 Meaning: Imaginative or fantastic.
 Example: There is no room here for evasive, theoretical, or fanciful
interpretations of the law.”

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111. Fastidious (Adjective)
 Meaning: Excessively particular, demanding, or fussy about details,
especially about tidiness and cleanliness.
 Example: Both Jack and Heather were fastidious, very attentive to
hygiene and the condition of their fingernails.

112. Fathom (Verb)

 Meaning: To get to the bottom of; to manage to comprehend; understand
(a problem etc.).
 Example: I can't for the life of me fathom what this means.

113. Fatuous (Adjective)

 Meaning: Obnoxiously stupid, vacantly silly, content in one's
foolishness.
 Example: Supermarket tabloids never provide an end-of-year list of false
predictions by psychics, nor do the more upscale New Age periodicals,
which, despite a veneer of sophistication, are just as fatuous.

114. Fawn (Verb)

 Meaning: To seek favour by flattery and obsequious behaviour (with on
or upon).
 Example: You’re still going to get plenty of women fawning over you.

115. Feasible (Adjective)

 Meaning: Able to be done in practice.
 Example: His plan to rid Trafalgar Square of pigeons by bringing in
peregrine falcons to eat them was dismissed as not feasible.

116. Feckless (Adjective)

 Meaning: Without skill, ineffective, incompetent.
 Example: As Harris describes it, the feckless Obama administration
mismanaged Syria nearly as badly as the Bush administration
mishandled Iraq.

117. Fecund (Adjective)

 Meaning: Highly fertile; productive, prolific.
 Example: Acre for acre, the Osa is one of the most fecund flecks of land
on Earth.

118. Felicitous (Adjective)

 Meaning: Appropriate, apt, fitting.

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  Example: The ruling’s timing proved felicitous: It came on the
penultimate day of the court’s session, at the end of New York’s vibrant
gay pride week and just before the Fourth of July.

119. Fervid (Adjective)

 Meaning: Intensely hot, emotional, or zealous.
 Example: In the fervid atmosphere of the late 60s, not everybody
recognized to what extent this was true.

120. Fetid (Adjective)

 Meaning: Foul-smelling, stinking.
 Example: I caught the fetid odor of dirty socks.

121. Fickle (Adjective)

 Meaning: Quick to change one’s opinion or allegiance; insincere; not
loyal or reliable.
 Example: “You told me love was fickle and fleeting,” Celia says,
confused.

122. Fidelity (Noun)

 Meaning: Loyalty to one's spouse or partner; Accuracy.
 Example: Her hairdresser could count on absolute fidelity and
punctuality.

123. Figurative (Adjective)

 Meaning: Emblematic, symbolic; representative, exemplative.
 Example: The play becomes a figurative dance of death between nun
and priest.

124. Finesse (Noun)

 Meaning: The property of having elegance, grace, refinement, or skill.
 Example: He had more finesse to his moves, but she had the advantage
of speed.

125. Flag (Verb)

 Meaning: To note, mark or point out for attention.
 Example: I have flagged up the need for further investigation into this.

126. Fledgling (Adjective)

 Meaning: Untried or inexperienced.
 Example: This was the most important way he kept himself informed
about the hundreds of things happening in the fledgling nation.

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127. Fleeting (Adjective)
 Meaning: Passing quickly; of short duration.
 Example: And, despite all the horror and hopelessness, I was fleetingly
happy.

128. Flippant (Adjective)

 Meaning: Showing disrespect through a casual attitude, levity, and a
lack of due seriousness; pert.
 Example: The conversations had grown more adult over the years—she
was less flippant, at least.

129. Florid (Adjective)

 Meaning: Elaborately ornate; flowery.
 Example: He was a fat man with a florid face and a sober black suit,
whose name was Martin Lanselius.

130. Flout (Verb)

 Meaning: To express contempt for (laws, rules, etc.) by word or action.
 Example: The tactics of Microsoft and HP appear to comply with the
letter of the regulations, even if they flout their spirit.

131. Fluke (Noun)

 Meaning: A lucky or improbable occurrence, with the implication that
the occurrence could not be repeated.
 Example: The first goal was just a fluke.

132. Foment (Verb)

 Meaning: To incite or cause troublesome acts; to encourage; to instigate.
 Example: Foreign governments have tried to foment unrest.

133. Forage (Verb)

 Meaning: To seek out and eat food.
 Example: During the day she would forage along the highway where
the grass was thick and green, then she would return at nightfall.

134. Ford (Verb)

 Meaning: To cross a stream.
 Example: If I forded the river, I’d hit a tributary that would lead me to
Ikwa, the village nearest my mother’s site.

135. Foreshadow (Verb)

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  Meaning: To presage, or suggest something in advance.
 Example: Beet sugar was a foreshadowing of what we have today: the
Age of Science, in which sweetness is a product of chemistry.

136. Forestall (Verb)

 Meaning: To prevent, delay or hinder something by taking
precautionary or anticipatory measures; to avert.
 Example: Fred forestalled disaster by his prompt action.

137. Forfeit (Verb)

 Meaning: To suffer the loss of something by wrongdoing or non-
compliance
 Example: He forfeited his last chance of an early release from jail by
repeatedly attacking another inmate.

138. Fortuitous (Adjective)

 Meaning: Happening by a lucky chance; lucky or fortunate.
 Example: It was a fortuitous time and place for an ambitious, dynamic
black teenager.

139. Fortify (Verb)

 Meaning: To increase the defenses of; To impart strength or vigor to.
 Example: It was slow going, but I felt fortified by the coin I held.

140. Fracas (Noun)

 Meaning: A noisy disorderly quarrel, fight, brawl, disturbance or scrap.
 Example: The fracas occurred less than two weeks after a gunman killed
12 and wounded 58 others at a Colorado movie theater.

141. Fractious (Adjective)

 Meaning: Irritable; argumentative; quarrelsome.
 Example: The fractious archaeological community embraced his ideas
with rare unanimity; they rapidly became the standard model for the
peopling of the Americas.

142. Frenetic (Adjective)

 Meaning: Fast, harried; having extreme enthusiasm or energy.
 Example: After a week of working at a frenetic pace, she was ready for
Saturday.

143. Fringe (Noun)

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  Meaning: A marginal or peripheral part; Those members of a political
party, or any social group, holding unorthodox views.
 Example: Perhaps she had joined some fringe group of the far right wing
that was making her belligerent and hostile.

144. Frivolous (Adjective)

 Meaning: Of little weight or importance; not worth notice; slight.
 Example: Committee members felt intense pressure not to impede
progress with frivolous objections.

145. Frugal (Adjective)

 Meaning: Avoiding unnecessary expenditure either of money or of
anything else which is to be used or consumed; avoiding waste.
 Example: I’d convinced my mother, as frugal as she was, that I needed
a computer for school.

146. Fulminate (Verb)

 Meaning: To make a verbal attack.
 Example: Hill says that watching Trump fulminate made her feel like
Alice in Wonderland watching the Queen of Hearts, with her constant
shouts of “Off with their heads!”

147. Furtive (Adjective)

 Meaning: stealthy; Exhibiting guilty or evasive secrecy.
 Example: For the first time since I’d known him, and with a furtive
gesture, he offered me his hand.

148. Futile (Adjective)

 Meaning: Incapable of producing results; doomed not to be successful;
not worth attempting.
 Example: Flies buzzed up and I covered my mouth a bit in a futile
attempt to stave off the smell.

149. Gainsay (Verb)

 Meaning: To say something in contradiction to.
 Example: “Whether one agrees with her opinions or not, there’s no
gainsaying her prominent place in the history of American political
thought,” he said.

150. Galvanize (Verb)

 Meaning: To shock or stimulate into sudden activity

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 Example: The girl’s picture helped galvanize public opinion against the
administration’s policy.

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