GRE Difficult Vocabulary Words, Randomly Selected

Here are 20 randomly-selected Difficult GRE Vocabulary Words*. To see another list of 20 words, refresh this page. Use these words to help you prepare for the verbal section of the GRE. Your sucess on the GRE analogy and antonym questions hinges on your the extent of your vocabulary -- the more words that you know, the higher your score.

However, as with all GRE vocabulary lists, memorizing words is not the best way to acquire and retain new vocabulary; to do that, you should read extensively. And, use MyGRETutor's vocabulary tutor to keep track of the words that you have mastered, and to brush up on those words that you have not.

WordPart of Speech  Definition

trenchant adjForceful; keen; effective.
factotum nA handyman; a person who is skilled at and who can perform a wide range of jobs.
vicissitude nA change; and alternation; a change of fortune.
crepuscular adjPertaining to the time when day is changing into night or night into day; not bright.
scurvy adjContemptible; mean.
defalcate vTo misuse monetary funds; to embezzle.
suppurate vTo form or give out; to deteriorate; to break.

*The difficulty of a word is guaged by how many people get it right on the vocabulary tutor section of MyGRETutor. Easy words are those words whose definition, on average, is selected by at least 80% of users. Medium words are those words whose definition is, on average, correctly selected between 40 and 80 percent of the time, and difficult words are those words whose definition is correctly selected less than 40% of the time.