IELTS Vocabulary
Prevaricate – to avoid telling the truth or saying exactly what you think
Sentence – When her mother asked about the last time she’d seen her boyfriend, Stella began to prevaricate, talking about school, the latest movies, and what she should wear to prom.
Rapscallion – a mischievous person.
Sentence – The boys were true rapscallions, setting off fireworks behind Mr. Smith’s motorcycle so he would think it was backfiring.”
Sagacious – having or showing understanding and the ability to make good judgments
Sentence – When the stock market crashed after a long period of ups and downs, he appeared sagacious for having invested in gold and silver.”
Sanguine – (of someone or someone’s character) positive and hoping for good things
Sentence – Even the icy rain and strong wind could not affect her sanguine disposition.”
Serendipity – the fact of finding interesting or valuable things by chance
Sentence – It turned out to be serendipity when he missed his flight and had to wait for hours in the airport bar, since this is where he met his future wife.”
Solipsist – someone who is extremely self-absorbed and doesn’t think about the perspectives or needs of others.
Sentence – Adam was a solipsist and was not particularly concerned with whether his family would enjoy camping with him in sub-zero temperatures.”
Synecdoche – a word or phrase in which a part of something is used to refer to the whole of it, for example “a pair of hands” for “a worker”, or the whole of something is used to refer to a part, for example “the law” for “a police officer”
Sentence – Other common forms of synecdoche include two concentric circles or triangles (used as eyes in horse and bison paintings), ibex horns and the hump of a mammoth.
Timorous – nervous and without much confidence
Sentence – An attempted coup in August was frustrated by the timorous behaviour of the Abuna, who stayed away from a crucial meeting.
Ubiquitous – seeming to be everywhere
Sentence – A ubiquitous process that starts immediately after death is of course decay, which in small mammals progresses very quickly.
Ultracrepidarian – someone who has no special knowledge of a subject but who expresses an opinion about it
Sentence – He was an ultracreidarian, rambling on about the politics of the time in a nearly incoherent way.”
Verisimilitude – the quality of seeming true or of having the appearance of being real
Sentence – The faux bois paint effect on the wall had such incredible verisimilitude that everyone thought it was actually made of wood.”
Visceral – based on deep feeling and emotional reactions rather than on reason or thought.
Sentence – Genomic DNA sequencing and mapping of the exon-intron boundaries showed that the visceral isoform was the product of cassette-type alternative splicing.
Zeugma – a use of language in which a word that has more than one meaning is used with one meaning in one part of a sentence and with a different meaning in another part of the sentence, usually in order to produce a humorous effect
Sentence – This paper explores into the theoretical basis of relevance by discussing the usage of four rhetorical devices in collocation variation, namely metaphor, hypallage, zeugma and pun.
