Vocabulary Building (Synonyms, Antonyms, Word Formation, Idioms)
This block tests words in use rather than dictionary recitation: synonyms and antonyms chosen to fit a sentence, word formation by prefix and suffix, one-word substitution, idioms and phrases, and commonly confused words.
Core rules
- Word formation changes the word class: beauty (noun) → beautiful (adjective) → beautify (verb) → beautifully (adverb). Read what the blank needs before adding anything.
- Prefixes change meaning (un-, in-, dis-, mis-, re-, pre-); suffixes change class (-ness, -ment, -ful, -less, -ly, -ify).
- An idiom's meaning is never literal, and it must keep its grammatical form in a sentence.
- Synonyms differ in connotation: "thin" and "slim" are not interchangeable in praise.
- Learn clusters: succeed, success, successful, successfully, unsuccessful.
Worked example
The manager turned a deaf ear to the workers' complaints. Meaning: he refused to listen to them. Reasoning: the phrase is idiomatic, so no literal deafness is involved; "turned a deaf ear to" is fixed, and the past tense of the sentence must survive in your own sentence ("The committee turned a deaf ear to the request for a delay").
Traps
Choosing a synonym that fits the dictionary but not the sentence; forming "inhappy" instead of "unhappy"; answering with the wrong part of speech - "bravely" where the blank needs the noun "bravery"; treating homophones as one word (accept/except, principal/principle); writing the idiom's meaning but forgetting to use it in a sentence when asked.