SAT Vocabulary — Group 17

A neophyte is someone who has just begun learning or practicing something and therefore still lacks experience.

A long-standing rival or an agent of someone's downfall, especially one seemingly impossible to overcome.

The practice of giving jobs or advantages to relatives or friends rather than to the most qualified people.

To deliberately make something unclear or difficult to understand.

Excessively eager to please or obey; servile.

Offering unwanted help or advice in an overly pushy, meddling way, often to feel important.

Burdensome; requiring great effort and difficult to bear.

To officially order or establish something with authority, or to formally appoint someone to a religious office.

Elaborately decorated with complex or showy detail.

To become rigid and fixed in a particular way, especially in habits, attitudes, or institutions; literally, to turn into bone.

Acceptable or agreeable enough to be tolerated, or literally pleasant to taste.

A panacea is a single fix that is believed, often naively, to solve every kind of problem at once.

A typical pattern or model of thinking that shapes how people understand an entire subject.

Something parochial reflects a limited, small-scale perspective that ignores broader or more diverse viewpoints.

A small or insufficient amount of something.

Overly concerned with minor details or rules, especially in a way meant to show off knowledge.

A strong, recurring liking or inclination for something.

Causing gradual, often unnoticed harm; insidiously destructive.

Calm, unemotional, and slow to react, even under stress.

Sounding sad or mournful, expressing sorrow.

A brief, uneasy feeling of doubt about whether an action is the right thing to do.

Excessively greedy and aggressive in grabbing for money, resources, or power.

To give formal, official approval to an agreement, making it valid and binding.

To rebuff someone is to turn down their proposal or advance sharply, often leaving no room for further discussion.

To recant is to publicly take back something you once claimed to believe, usually under pressure or after a change of heart.