• Lacerate: Did you ever see a barbed wire or a sharp object tear the skin of a person? Rip it apart? Oh, I am sorry to hurt you psychologically. But you did see such a thing. Lacerate is just that. To lacerate is to wound deeply. It also means to distress somebody deeply, emotionally. You can usually find this word in the ‘Analogy’ segment of GRE.

• Ravage: How it looks the second day on a battle field? You see warriors/soldiers walking around, introspecting the damages incurred. Hmm a very bad visual indeed! Ravage as a noun means ‘havoc’, ‘damage’. As a verb it means to do ruinous damage. Is that now clear?

• Decimate: Did you hear about epidemics like swine flu, bird flu, and plague. These horrendous epidemics are the diseases that are not permanent, neither specific to a place. Nevertheless they have a potential to wipe away a substantial part of the population. Gruesome! Aren’t they? The verb decimates means to destroy a substantial part. If you look at the word closely you have the root ‘deci’ which means the tenth part. So to decimate is to kill the tenth person. Can you now imagine the loss?

• Subvert: To subvert is to corrupt, to overthrow, to destroy, to ruin. History offers rich examples for a verb like this. Can you think of ‘fall of Roman, Mughal dynasties’ owing to subverters (noun)?

An illustration explains better:

“Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community” (Alexander Hamilton)

(dictionary.com)

• Extort: Now I will take you all into the wonderful world of imagination. Visualize a rich heiress being surrounded by perpetrators holding guns and asking her to sign on documents against her will. Did you visualize a scene like that? And now when the heiress rejects signing, the perpetrators hold the gun against her head and thrust it even more violently. Well, well, well this is extortion (noun). To extort is to force a person to do something against his/her wish.

• Sabotage: Well some people want to foil the plans of others in an intelligent way. Ahem, at the same time they do not want to become unpopular. Sabotage is any underhand interference with work/production. Hmm let me think of some candid illustration. How many of you watched the movie Gladiator?? Russell Crowe as General Maximus stole the show didn’t he? Just recollect the last scene; the surreptitious and immoral Caesar injects poison into General Maximus just before the deadly duel. The craven Caesar wants to win the duel. I am sure you all understood. An act like that is nothing but sabotage.

• Jeopardize: How many of us seriously watch birds and animals. We hardly do that, do we? Most of the time we are bothered with thoughts on carving a niche for ourselves either in the academic or the professional world. But when we read journals pertaining to Zoology we realize that there are numerous species already extinct or at the verge of extinction. How sad?! Now jeopardize is this, when something is at the verge of extinction. It also means when the existence of some thing, could be anything, is endangered, means at risk. Could you now research for a day or two on some animals/birds that are jeopardized, i.e. animals/birds that are at the brink of extinction? You can spend a Sunday doing this, some interesting project work to all my students here. Well, do not forget sharing the names of ‘jeopardized’ species with us here.

I suggest you all to spend a little time with these words. Date them rather. They are really extraordinary and interesting. Try to recollect many visuals that relate to a specific word from the above list. Believe me, these are the words that keep appearing in GRE’s (Graduate Record Examination) Verbal Ability Section. (Antonyms, Analogies and Sentence Completion).

Some important advice:

Do not just read but work on these words. Use a notebook to jot them down and a dictionary to understand the meaning and the context better. As I always tell: Utter the words aloud- each word five times!!

Things you should never forget:

1. Work with the word.

2. Expand its meaning into a suitable context.

3. Relate it to the person or situation you know.

4. Share the word with your friends, colleagues

5. Try to pronounce the word aloud at least five times

Read this blog on extraordinary words more than once to comprehend its essence thoroughly. Do get back to us with queries in case you have any.

Wishing you all, success!!

Regards,

Anu Veluri

Manager- learnwordlist.com