Barron's High Frequency 333 GRE Words : 41-50

1. Boorish (adj) : rude, insensitive; Though Mr. Potts constantly interrupted his wife, she ignored his BOORISH behavior for she had lost hope of teaching him courtesy.
2. Burgeoning (adj) : flourishing, growing quickly, putting out buds; Phil and Adam could scarcely keep up with the BURGEONING demand for the services of their production company.
3. Burnish (v) : make shiny by rubbing, polish; The maid BURNISHED the brass fixtures until they reflected the lamplight.
4. Buttress (v) : support, prop up; Just as architects BUTTRESS the walls of cathedrals with buttresses, debaters buttress their arguments with facts.
5. Cacophonous (adj) : discordant, inharmonious; Do the students in the orchestra enjoy the CACOPHONOUS sounds they make when they’re tuning up?
6. Capricious (adj) : unpredictable, fickle; The storm was CAPRICIOUS, it changed course constantly.
7. Castigation (n) : punishment, severe criticism; Sensitive even to mild criticism, Woolf could not bear the CASTIGATION that she found in certain reviews.
8. Catalyst (n) : agent that influences the pace of a chemical reaction while it remains unaffected and unchanged, person or thing that causes action; After a banana is harvested, certain enzymes within its cells continue to act as a CATALYST for the biochemical processes of ripening.
9. Caustic (adj) : burning, sarcastically biting; The critic’s CAUSTIC remarks angered the hapless actors who were the subjects of his sarcasm.
10. Chicanery (n) : trickery, deception; Those sneaky lawyers misrepresented what occurred, made up all sorts of implausible alternative scenarios to confuse the jurors, and in general depended on CHICANERY to win the case.