TOEFL Must-Have 400 Words : 21-30

1. Aggravate v. To make worse; to anger or intensify; Running will aggravate your sore knees.
2. Aggregate adj. Gathered into or amounting to a whole; It is impossible to judge last year’s performance without knowing the aggregate sales numbers.
3. Agnostic adj. Believing that humans cannot know whether there is a god; His devoutly Christian parents had problems with his agnostic beliefs.
4. Allegedly adv. According to what people say; The chief financial officer of the company allegedly took company money for his personal use.
5. Allegiance n. Loyalty; My allegiance to my country is based on respect for its principles.
   
6. Allocate v. To give out different amounts for different purposes; The budget allocates $58 billion to the military and only about $2 billion to education.
7. Amateurish adj. Not good enough to be the work of professionals; Whoever painted this room did an amateurish job, with all sorts of uneven edges.
8. Ambiguous adj. Having more than one possible meaning; The sentence It’s hard to say is ambiguous, with different meanings in different contexts.
9. Amend v. To change for the better; The residents voted to amend their neighborhood policy on fences.
10. Analyze v. To examine something by looking at its parts; Chemists analyzed the white powder and found it to be only a mixture of sugar and salt.
11. Ancestral adj. Relating to family members from earlier generations; Sweden is my ancestral homeland, from which my great grandfather emigrated in 1922.

TOEFL Must-Have 400 Words : 11-20

1. Adjacent adj. Next to; Even though the villages are adjacent to each other, their residents speak different languages.
2. Adjust v. To change; to get accustomed to something; Travelers are advised to adjust their watches before arriving in the new time zone.
3. Adolescent adj. Characteristic of a teenager; not fully grown up; In policy meetings, George refuses to reason with anyone and just scowls in an adolescent way.
4. Advent n. Coming; arrival; The advent of the automobile greatly increased the demand for petroleum.
5. Adversely adv. In a harmful way, negatively; Excessive rainfall early in the spring can adversely affect the planting of crops.
   
6. Advocate v. To speak out in favor of something; Some environmentalists advocate removing large dams from the Columbia River.
7. Aesthetically adv. In a way that relates to beauty or appearance; The outside of the office building is aesthetically pleasing, but the inside is dark and unpleasant.
8. Affection n. An emotional closeness or warmth; I show affection for my girlfriend by spending time with her, not by spending money on her.
9. Affluence n. Wealth and the style of life that goes with it; Mohadzir grew up amid affluence, which poorly prepared him for his grad student days in crowded apartments with no servants.
10. Aggravate v. To make worse; to anger or intensify; Running will aggravate your sore knees.

TOEFL Must-Have 400 Words : 1-10

1. Abandon v. To leave, to give up; To save their lives, the sailors had to abandon the sinking ship.
2. Abduction n. Kidnapping; Pirates got many crew members by abduction, snatching unlucky citizens from seaport towns.
3. Abstract adj. Not concrete and realistic; not obviously related to everyday experience; Abstract painting became popular partly because early photography was very realistic.
4. Accumulate v. To build up a large amount of something; Over several generations, the Hardington family accumulated vast wealth by buying and selling land.
5. Accuracy n. Precision; exactness; The research department checks all our articles for accuracy of facts before we print them.
   

   
6. Accuse v. To say that someone did something wrong (e.g., committed a crime); Jordan was accused of using a stolen credit card to buy about $300 worth of electronic equipment.
7. Acquire v. To get something, usually something with special value or meaning; Bart hoped to acquire the 1898 D Indian Head penny, which would make his collection complete.
8. Acquisition n. The act of taking possession of something; Our recent acquisition of over 2,000 books makes ours the biggest library in the region.
9. Adapt v. To adjust to the circumstances; to make suitable; Dinosaurs could not adapt to the warmer temperatures. The teacher adapted the exercises for his more advanced students.
10. Addictive adj. Making someone want it so much that the person feels ill without it; Some drugs, like heroin or methamphetamine, are addictive to almost everyone who tries them.

Barron's High Frequency 333 Words : 111-120

1. Eclectic (adj) selective, composed of elements drawn from disparate sources; His style of interior decoration was ECLECTIC: bits and pieces of furnishings from widely divergent periods, strikingly juxtaposed to create a unique decor.
2. Efficacy (n) power to produce desired effect; The EFFICACY of this drug depends on the regularity of the dosage.
3. Effrontery (n) impudence, shameless boldness, sheer nerve, presumptuousness; When the boss told Frank she was firing him for laziness and insubordination, he had the EFFRONTERY to ask her for a letter of recommendation.
4. Elegy (n) poem or song expressing lamentation; On the death of Edward King, Million composed the elegy “Lycidas.”.
5. Elicit (v) draw out by discussion; The detectives tried to ELICIT where he had hidden his loot.
   

   
6. Embellish (v) adorn, ornament, enhance, as a story; The costume designer EMBELLISHED the leading lady’s ball gown with yards and yards of ribbon and lace.
7. Empirical (adj) based on experience; He distrusted hunches and intuitive flashes; he placed his reliance entirely on EMPIRICAL data.
8. Emulate (v) imitate, rival; In a brief essay, describe a person you admire, someone whose virtues you would like to EMULATE.
9. Endemic (adj) prevailing among a specific group of people or in a specific area or country; This disease is ENDEMIC in this part of the world; more than 80 percent of the population are at one time or another affected by it.
10. Enervate (v) weaken; She was slow to recover from her illness; even a short walk to the window ENERVATED her.

SAT High Frequency Words : 101-110

1. Digression N. wandering away from the subject. Nobody minded when Professor Renoir’s lectures wandered away from their official theme; his digressions were always more fascinating than the topic of the day.
2. Diligence N. steadiness of effort; persistent hard work. Her employers were greatly impressed by her diligence and offered her a partnership in the firm.
3. Diminution N. lessening; reduction in size. Old Jack was as sharp at eighty as he had been at fifty; increasing age led to no diminution of his mental acuity.
4. Discerning ADJ. mentally quick and observant; having insight. Though no genius, the star was sufficiently discerning to tell her true friends from the countless phonies who flattered her.
5. Disclose V. reveal. Although competitors offered him bribes, he refused to disclose any information about his company’s forthcoming product.
6. Discordant ADJ. not harmonious; conflicting. Nothing is quite so discordant as the sound of a junior high school orchestra tuning up.
7. Discount V. disregard; dismiss. Be prepared to discount what he has to say about his ex-wife.
8. Discriminating ADJ. able to see differences; prejudiced. A superb interpreter of Picasso, she was sufficiently discriminating to judge the most complex works of modern art.
9. Disdain V. view with scorn or contempt. In the film Funny Face, the bookish heroine disdained fashion models for their lack of intellectual interests.
10. Disinclination N. unwillingness. Some mornings I feel a great disinclination to get out of bed.

Barron's High Frequency 333 Words : 101-110

1. Dissonance (n) discord, opposite of harmony; Composer Charles Ives often used DISSONANCE - clashing or unresolved chords - for special effects in his musical works.
2. Distend (v) expand, swell out; I can tell when he is under stress by the way the veins DISTEND on his forehead.
3. Distill (v) purify, refine, concentrate; A moonshiner DISTILLS mash into whiskey; an epigrammatic distills thoughts int quips.
4. Diverge (v) vary, go in different directions from the same point; The spokes of the wheel DIVERGE from the hub.
5. Divest (v) strip, deprive; He was DIVESTED of his power to act and could no longer govern.
6. Document (v) provide written evidence; She kept all the receipts from her business trip in order to DOCUMENT her expenses for the firm.
7. Dogmatic (adj) opinionated, arbitrary, doctrinal; We tried to discourage Doug from being so DOGMATIC, but never could convince him that his opinions might be wrong.
8. Dormant (adj) sleeping, lethargic, latent; At fifty her long-DORMANT ambition to write flared up once more; within a year she had completed the first of her great historical novels.
9. Dupe (n) someone easily fooled; While the gullible Watson often was made a DUPE by unscrupulous parties, Sherlock Holmes was far more difficult to fool.
10. Ebullient (adj) showing excitement, overflowing with enthusiasm; Amy’s EBULLIENT nature could not be repressed; she was always bubbling over with excitement.

SAT High Frequency Words : 91-100

1. Deprecate (v) . express disapproval of; protest against; belittle. A firm believer in old-fashioned courtesy, Miss Post deprecated the modern tendency to address new acquaintances by their first names.
2. Deride V. ridicule; make fun of. The critics derided his pretentious dialogue and refused to consider his play seriously.
3. Derivative ADJ. unoriginal; derived from another source. Although her early poetry was clearly derivative in nature, the critics thought she had promise and eventually would find her own voice.
4. Despondent ADJ. depressed; gloomy. To the dismay of his parents, William became seriously despondent after he broke up with Jan; they despaired of finding a cure for his gloom.
5. Detached ADJ. emotionally removed; calm and objective; physically unconnected. A psychoanalyst must maintain a detached point of view and stay uninvolved with his or her patients’ personal lives.
6. Deterrent N. something that discourages; hindrance. Does the threat of capital punishment serve as a deterrent to potential killers?
7. Detrimental ADJ. harmful; damaging. The candidate’s acceptance of major financial contributions from a wellknown racist ultimately proved detrimental to his campaign, for he lost the backing of many of his early grassroots supporters.
8. Devious ADJ. roundabout; erratic; not straightforward. The Joker’s plan was so devious that it was only with great difficulty we could follow its shifts and dodges.
9. Devise V. think up; invent; plan. How clever he must be to have devised such a devious plan! What ingenious inventions might he have devised if he had turned his mind to science and not to crime.
10. Diffuse ADJ. wordy; rambling; spread out (like a gas). If you pay authors by the word, you tempt them to produce diffuse manuscripts rather than brief ones.