The Challenging Vocabulary Test

A malapropism is when someone uses a similar-sounding word in place of the correct word. An example being, "Hoisted by his own regard," with the word regard used in place of petard.

Picture a crowd streaming out of a stadium after watching their team win the championship game. Chances are they are going to be exultant or jubilant, expressing joy and triumph through cheers and shouts.

As a parent, it can be a real pain having to deal with a recalcitrant child. The main meaning of the word is describing someone or people who refuse to follow authority or be restrained. It can also mean resistant to treatment.

Garrulous and loquacious are two big words that are used to describe someone who is extremely talkative. We have all had the garrulous coworker who just could not keep their opinion to themselves, no matter how many times you asked.

The famous rock band, Incubus, took its name from a word that means a major source of stress and anxiety. For example, "The looming foreclosure of his family's house was an incubus for an already troubled John."

A vagabond is known to be someone who spends lots of time wandering around without a fixed home. These lovers of freedom live an errant lifestyle, which is also a word to describe someone who wanders around.

Our poor, bored Anna is filled with ennui, which is boredom and dissatisfaction resulting from a lack of things to do. Generally, this condition is associated with the upper class and those who have enough financial stability to endure long periods of inactivity.

The archetypal prodigal son is a wasteful troublemaker who burns through his parents' resources on self-indulgence and vice. A frugal son would be trying to stretch every penny and denying himself​ unnecessary luxuries.

In olden times, the Latin word tiro would refer to a young and inexperienced soldier. The word has persisted in the English language, now spelled tyro, and continues to refer to people who are novices in a profession.

The word disparate is a synonym for different, used to describe markedly distinct and often incongruous paths. In the case of our friends here, they took very different paths in life.

Give me an E! Give me a B! Give me a U-L-L-I-E-N-T! Three cheers for the ebullient people who are energetic and full of energy. These people can be a great motivation to help finish a project or a bit of a pest if you just want to relax and be left alone.

Think of a loud, crass, self-aggrandizing rich person and you are thinking of someone who displays ostentation. While ostentatious people are always bragging and trying to impress you, those who possess humility are humble about their accomplishments.

Surfeit is described as an overabundance or immoderate consumption. For example, "The college students planned a big party to celebrate their graduation and purchased a surfeit of beer, pizza and soda.

The religious devout venerate holy objects. In the case of the example, Catholics will venerate particular saints. To venerate is to regard with reverential respect or with admiring deference, especially with regard to ritual devotion.

Goths, horror movie fans and true crime enthusiasts are all lured in by the macabre. Macabre and lurid both describe a fixation with the grisly or gruesome. A homicide reporter would ask a detective for the lurid details of a recent murder case.

If your grandfather is very reserved with his words, you could say he is a taciturn man. This word, which is a synonym for uncommunicative, comes from the word tacit, which means reserved or without speech.

An aesthete is a person who has developed an appreciation for aesthetics, usually relating to sensory experiences like art and music. Aesthetes will cultivate their appreciation by going to museums, reading books on aesthetics and maybe participating in the creation of art.

You don't want to experience living in penury, a state characterized by extreme poverty and need. Penury can be used to describe the poverty of an individual, a group or community, or even an entire state.

A gossamer thread is light, thin, delicate and can be broken at any moment. Used as a noun, gossamer refers to a cobweb floating in still air. Gossamer can be used to describe weight, dreams, or any thin and precious item.

Something that is iridescent has a lustrous quality that is the result of refracting light. The result is a rainbow effect that changes color depending on your angle of viewing, like an oil slick or water on the road.

To bereave is to deprive or steal away, so provide would be the closest antonym in this situation. Bereavement is often associated with death, as a family is bereaved of a loved one.

After living in isolation and reading all that philosophy, it is likely Victor would have some idiosyncratic viewpoints. When something is idiosyncratic, it is peculiar or eccentric.

When you are lacking spirit, motivation or interest in something, you are feeling lackadaisical. It can also characterize a languid attitude when something is moving slowly and without direction.

Plug your nose and break out the menthol rubs when you pass something fetid because it is going to have a very unpleasant smell. Some commonly fetid places are swamps, dumpsters behind seafood restaurants and meat rendering facilities.

Something that is described as inane or vacuous means that it is lacking depth and intelligence. For example, "Marianne's presentation was completely vacuous, full of generalizations and lacking any actionable ideas.

If friends and family describe you as irascible, you should probably start looking for anger management programs. In non-GRE terms, an irascible person is someone who has a short fuse or a quick temper.

Those deceptive pirates were up to some good old fashioned chicanery, which is an act of deception or trickery. This word stems from the French clinquant and was used by 17th century Englishmen who found themselves on the wrong end of falsehood.

When you are going through the minutiae of a report, you are checking out the minor details that you might otherwise miss at a glance. The word comes from Latin and means trifling details.

Innate is used to describe something that comes from within, often a characteristic trait or belief that someone has always held. So alien would be the antonym, meaning external or from elsewhere.

The word malign has the prefix "mal-" which is a sure sign that something bad is happening. Whether it is malicious, malevolent, or maligning, these words stem from the Latin word malus, which means bad.

The Defenestration of Prague happened in 1618 and kicked off the 30 Years' War. Defenestration comes from the French word fenetre, which means window. So a defenestration is throwing someone or something out of a window.

The professor could not hide his antipathy when he called the cheating student into his office. Earlier, he had felt an extraordinary admiration for his star pupil when he graded her paper.

When someone or a group of people have conflicting opinions about something, they are ambivalent to it. The word has the prefix ambi- which means both, which is why ambiverts exhibit both introverted and extroverted characteristics.

When someone is no longer stimulated by pleasure or luxury because they have experienced so much of it that it has become commonplace, they have a blasé attitude towards it. Ty Dolla $ign's song by the same name is an excellent depiction of someone who finds life's pleasures blasé.

A clangor is characterized by noise resulting from things clanging together. Cacophony is also used to describe a disharmonious collection of sounds and noises, as in the noisy cacophony of a construction site.