Friday, March 7, 2008

Tricky Lookalike Words

The following pairs of words look similar and are easily confused with each other. Test writers often take advantage of this confusion. Some are very similar in meaning, while others are different. Know the difference!

1) adulate and adulterate

2) adverse and averse

3) anachronism and anarchism

4) antipathy and apathy

5) ascetic and aesthetic

6) baleful and baneful

7) censure and censor

8) capitulate and recapitulate

9) disparate and desperate

10) divers and diverse

11) elicit and illicit

12) heterogeneous and homogeneous

13) illusion and allusion

14) imbibe and imbue

15) imminent and eminent

16) ingenious and ingenuous

17) mendicant and mendacious

18) penury and penurious

19) pestilence and petulance

20) qualitative and quantitative

21) vicious and viscious


1) adulate: to praise, adulterate: to make impure

2) adverse: hostile; averse: unwilling

3) anachronism: an outdated custom, anarchism: disruptive

4) antipathy: hatred, aversion, apathy: indifference

5) ascetic: self-denying, abstinent, austere aesthetic: related to beauty or art

6) baleful: forshadows evil, baneful: poisonous, deadly

7) censure: blame, criticize, censor: to remove the inappropriate

8) capitulate: to surrender, recapitulate: to repeat

9) disparate: different; diverse, desperate: needy, beyond reason

10) divers: several diverse: distinct, varied

11) elicit: to draw out, provoke illicit: illegal, improper

12) heterogeneous: diverse throughout homogeneous: the same throughout

13) illusion: something unreal deceptive allusion: indirect reference

14) imbibe: to drink imbue: to infuse, dye, wet or moisten

15) imminent: at any moment, soon eminent: famous, renowned

16) ingenious: original, clever ingenuous: straightforward, open

17) mendicant: beggar mendacious: dishonest

18) penury: extreme poverty penurious: stingy

19) pestilence: epidemic, plague petulance: irritable or ill-tempered

20) qualitative: having to do with a quality, quantitative: having to do with a number

21) vicious: mean; viscious: resistance to flow

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