66 VOCABULARY FOR TOEFL iBT
Another important reason to review homonyms like team/teem and waive/wave is
to avoid a “trap” sometimes set by the test developers. That is, you might encounter
questions that use the definition of a familiar homonym as a distracter. Here’s an
example:To waive means
a. to signal with an up and down or back and forth movement.
b. to return to the original starting point.
c. to relinquish a right or claim.
d. to swell up or rise to the surface.The correct answer is c. Waive means to give up (a right or claim) voluntarily,
relinquish; to refrain from enforcing or insisting upon (a rule, penalty, standard pro-
cedure, etc.). If you don’t know the meaning of waive, however, you might be
tempted to choose a , which is the definition of its homophone wave, or d , which is
related to the definition of a wave. These answer choices are tempting because they
sound familiar. You need to be able to recognize the familiar homophone and recall
its definition.
Not all commonly confused words are homonyms. Take disinterested and unin-
terested as an example. They don’t sound the same because they have very distinct
prefixes. But the prefixes are attached to the same root, and the prefixes seem to
have essentially the same meaning: dis- means away from, apart, reversal, not; un-
means not, against. Thus many people assume that both words mean the same
thing: not interested. However, only uninterested has this meaning. Disinterested
means impartial or unbiased, free of selfish motives or interests—a different word
entirely.
Some commonly confused words are particularly puzzling because the words not
only sound similar, but they also have similar meanings. Take the homophones cue
and queue, for example. Both mean a line of waiting people or vehicles, although
queue is used far more often than cue for this meaning. However, cue also means a
signal, such as a word or action, given to prompt or remind someone of
something—and this is its most common usage. And queue can also mean an
ordered list of tasks to be performed or sequence of programs awaiting processing
on a computer.