GRE verbal is famous for its vocabulary, and most candidates prepare for it the least efficient way: memorising lists. The test is not asking whether you have met a word. It is asking whether you can work out what a sentence needs.
Predict before you read the options. Cover them. Read the sentence and write, in your own plain words, what the gap must mean — "something like 'praised'", "something like 'not obvious'". Then find the option closest to your prediction. Students who read the options first get pulled by whichever word feels most impressive.
The sentence always contains the clue, and it is usually one of three:
- A contrast word — although, despite, yet, nevertheless, far from — which tells you the gap
- opposes something else in the sentence.
- A continuation — moreover, indeed, in fact, because — which tells you the gap agrees with it.
- A definition — the sentence explains the missing word in other words, often after a colon or
- a dash.
Sentence equivalence needs TWO answers that make the SAME sentence. Not two defensible words — two that produce equivalent meaning. A pair is what you are looking for, so scan for the pair rather than judging each option alone. If only one word fits your prediction, you have the wrong prediction.
What to learn, if you are going to learn words. Learn the ones that keep appearing in these sentence patterns: equivocal, laconic, ameliorate, intransigent, ubiquitous, tenuous, prosaic, cogent. And learn them in a sentence, because that is how they will be tested.