“We’re going to try to thwart him,” the talkative tadpole in the tutu said
tersely. “If that bill passes, I’ll truncate his term with allegations of
unscrupulousness. We must not forsake our tenets.”
Her words caught me unawares. The tadpole had seemed to me to be polite
and unassuming, but instead she was an unruly youth with a penchant for tirades.
Craziness was ubiquitous.
V
vacillate
to waver from one side to the other; oscillate
While the skier vacillated about whether to use Vaseline or ChapStick, his lips
got chapped.
vacuity
emptiness; vacuum
The scientists were amazed by the utter vacuity in the proctor’s brain—there was
not a trace of brain matter anywhere.
vehement
with ardor; energetically or violently forceful
The vehement protesters put down their signs for a moment and freshened their
breath via mints.
ver-
The motto of Harvard is “Veritas” and the motto of Yale is
“Lux et veritas.” These two schools may be knocking down your door once you
get your 1600, so you might as well know that veritas is Latin for “truth.” (Lux
means “light.”) When you see the root “ver-” in an SAT word, that word
probably has something to do with truth.
“La verdad” means “the truth” for those of us in Spanish class.
—Samantha
Examples: