Drill 1 · Reading & Writing · Hard Words in Context
SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Words in Context (Drill 1) is a Reading & Writing practice drill covering Hard Words in Context. It contains 5 original questions developed by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.
Hard SAT Words in Context questions ask you to choose the word or phrase that most precisely completes the sentence. The answer is rarely an obscure word; difficulty comes from three plausible distractors that all nearly fit, with one signal in the sentence pinning the correct choice.
Question 1. Far from being a fixed inheritance, the songs of humpback whales are ______: a population's melodies shift season to season as individuals copy and embellish one another's phrases.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?
Explanation: (B) The clause after the colon says the songs 'shift season to season' as whales copy and embellish one another, so they change: they are mutable. 'Far from being a fixed inheritance' rules out (A) immutable, which means the opposite. (C) mellifluous (sweet-sounding) may be true of whale song but says nothing about change, which is the sentence's whole concern, and (D) protracted has to do with how long something lasts, not whether it varies.
Question 2. Reviewers expected the novelist's late style to grow ornate, yet her final book is strikingly ______: short declarative sentences, a bare vocabulary, almost no figurative language.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?
Explanation: (D) The list after the colon names short declarative sentences, a bare vocabulary, and almost no figurative language. That is writing stripped to essentials, which is what spare means, and the clear opposite of the ornate style reviewers had expected. (C) florid means showily decorated, the very thing the bare style refutes, so it cannot describe it. (A) terse catches the short sentences but not the plain vocabulary or the missing figuration, so it accounts for only one of the three clues. (B) vapid means empty of substance, yet the point is restraint of style, not absence of content.
Question 3. The following text is adapted from Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice.
Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry, for he answered her sharp question with nothing but warmth and courtesy.
As used in the text, what does the word "affront" most nearly mean?
Explanation: (A) Elizabeth 'expected to affront him' but met 'gallantry' instead and was 'amazed,' so affront has to mean the opposite of his courteous response: to give offense. (B) flatter and (D) impress both invert this, since setting out to please him would make his gallantry no surprise at all. (C) avoid has no support in the sentence; 'affront him' means to offend or insult him, not to stay away from him.
Question 4. The committee's report was praised as balanced, but critics noted that its recommendations were ______, repeating the cautious consensus of every prior panel without adding a single new proposal.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?
Explanation: (C) The recommendations 'repeat the cautious consensus of every prior panel without adding a single new proposal,' which is the definition of derivative: drawn from earlier sources rather than original. (B) exhaustive runs counter to this, since adding nothing new suggests thinness, not thoroughness. Because the report is 'praised as balanced,' neither (A) tendentious (biased toward a position) nor (D) inflammatory (meant to provoke anger) fits a document faulted only for being unoriginal.
Question 5. Skeptics had dismissed the trader's reported gains as ______, insisting the deals existed only on paper, but auditors later matched each one to a real, time-stamped trade in the public ledger.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?
Explanation: (B) The skeptics insisted 'the deals existed only on paper,' and the auditors refuted them by matching each gain 'to a real, time-stamped trade,' so the skeptics had claimed the gains were invented, which is what fictitious means. The other three describe qualities the ledger evidence never speaks to: (A) paltry means trivially small and (D) exorbitant means excessively large, but the dispute is about whether the trades happened, not their size, and (C) imprudent means unwise, a judgment about risk rather than reality. Only fictitious is the charge that matching the trades to real records disproves.