life”) or preference (“Pink plaid is really not my taste”) or social customs
(“Farting at the dinner table is in bad taste”).
It’s safe to assume that the Serpent will try to trip you up whenever possible. Sometimes the answer will be the word’s most well-knownmeaning, but make sure you can really justify that answer.
—Samantha
Many vocabulary-in-context questions pick out a certain word from a passage
and ask you to choose the correct synonym. For example, the passage may have
a line like “Harold was positive that the offending BO in the boys’ locker room
was coming from Stinky Steve,” followed by the question:
In line 14, “positive” most nearly means
A) cheerful
B) encouraging
C) confident
D) optimisticWhile “positive” can mean any of these things in different contexts,
“confident” is the only synonym that makes sense here. Usually, the SAT
questions are about loftier themes than body odor, but the logic is the same.
You should also expect some questions that ask about hypothetical variations
in word choice and what the impact might be on meaning:
If instead of the word “passion” the author had used the word
“toothpaste” in line 7, what would have changed about the meaning of
paragraph 3?Also note that the tricky vocabulary word is not always in the question.
Sometimes it is in the answer choices. For example:
Which of the following words best describes the mood that Toby was
in when he invented the ketchup milk shake?
A) exhilarated
B) inspired
C) lugubrious
D) ambivalent