We’ve been going on and on lately about how important it is to devote study time to learning basic word roots, and that’s partly because many primary schools these days skip over this essential vocabulary skill in favor of rote memorization. If etymological research was not something you learned how to do in school, now that you’re focused on learning vocabulary to study for an SAT or GRE test, or to improve your ability to read complicated technical or scholarly documents as part of your professional or academic advancement goals, you’ll need to spend part of your vocabulary study schedule on practicing just that. We’ll be giving more helpful tips on how to identify and learn word roots in the future on this blog, along with our usual study guides and vocabulary lessons, but today we’re giving you a little quiz to help you judge how well you’re able to use your knowledge of word roots to determine the meanings of words you’re not familiar with.
1. Which of these is not a type of mineral?
a. calcite
b. hematite
c. plebiscite
d. muscovite
2. Which of these is not an architectural element?
a. ogee
b. minatory
c. cornice
d. portico
3. Which of these words means “to deliberately make something harder to understand”?
a. obfuscate
b. confabulate
c. misconstrue
d. confute
4. Which of these words would you use to describe a person who’s happy and full of good humor?
a. jonquil
b. jejune
c. judicious
d. jovial
We’ll post the answers tomorrow. In the meantime, if you’re not confident that you have the skills you need to use word roots to help you understand new words, you can review these previous posts:
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