This document contains 20 sentence equivalence questions from a GRE verbal reasoning practice test. Each question is a sentence with a blank and 6 answer choices. The questions cover topics such as diaries, animal welfare advertising, conclusions from scientific studies, school testing, biographies, negotiations, theatrical productions, teaching styles, reconciling empirical and theoretical concepts, maintaining composure during interviews, adherence to political ideas, effects of noise, discipline, simplifying complex ideas, teaching styles, following unconventional theories, literary interests, book prefaces, being preyed on by charlatans, and following directions. The document concludes by listing the answer choices for each question.

1. GRE VERBAL
SENTENCE EQUIVALENCE

2. QUESTION 1
 Mannering's personal diary, a record of ____
preoccupations and domestic details, belies the
depth of thought for which he was renowned in the
academic world.
 A. philosophical
B. mundane
C. petty
D. weighty
E. erudite
F. untoward

3. QUESTION 2
 Animal welfare charities have found that extensive
advertising, especially over the Christmas
period, can actually drive down the volume of
donations as people who view images of maltreated
pets more than a few times rapidly become ____ .
 A. inured
B. miserly
C. disgusted
D. hardened
E. bored
F. overwrought

4. QUESTION 3
 The study’s ____ conclusion is that during the first
half of the 20th Century improved standards of
personal hygiene reduced the risk of an individual’s
contracting poliomyelitis, yet tended to make the
disease more lethal to communities.
 A. exciting
B. paradoxical
C. unwarranted
D. long-awaited
E. anomalous
F. interim

5. QUESTION 4
 The devotion to the syllabus and testing regime has
become so extreme that most school students
close their minds to anything ____ to the needs of
the examination.
 A. related
B. catering
C. extraneous
D. similar
E. helpful
F. peripheral

6. QUESTION 5
 The ____ tone of the biography is entirely
unexpected since both the biographer in her
previous works and her subject in all that he has
written have valued levity over solemnity.
 A. lugubrious
B. jaunty
C. jocose
D. frivolous
E. ironic
F. melancholy

7. QUESTION 6
 After hours of acrimonious arguments the
negotiations reached a(n) _____ ; neither side was
willing to compromise.
 A. solution
B. impasse
C. conclusion
D. end
E. deadlock
F. resolution

8. QUESTION 7
 This new staging of King Lear is not a production in
which every aspect falls neatly into place
throughout; however, the drama does ____ at
certain points to give the audience memorable and
thought-provoking moments.
 A. coalesce
B. crystallize
C. triumph
D. flower
E. dissolve
F. transcend

9. QUESTION 8
 The teacher’s mercurial mood changes and ____
approach to grading made the students uneasy;
they never knew what would please him or what
would earn good marks.
 A. tardy
B. authoritarian
C. strict
D. ambivalent
E. whimsical
F. hidebound

10. QUESTION 9
 The book is an attempt on the part of the eminent
scholar to reconcile the ____ experience and
theoretical underpinnings of certain everyday
phenomena.
 A. philosophical
B. empirical
C. arcane
D. practical
E. superficial
F. obtuse

11. QUESTION 10
 The last candidate interviewed conducted herself
with commendable ____ even when badgered with
questions that had drawn unseemly outbursts from
all the other interviewees.
 A. pertinacity
B. adroitness
C. alacrity
D. decorum
E. propriety
F. presence of mind

12. QUESTION 11
 ____ adherence to outdated political ideas and
defunct sects characterized the last years of a man
who had, surprisingly, been one of the most flexible
thinkers of the 1920s.
 A. Intransigent
B. Vacillating
C. Sectarian
D. Confused
E. Frantic
F. Dogged

13. QUESTION 12
 The ____ effects of constant noise drove Natasha
to seek refuge in a more salubrious spot until she
recovered her mental equilibrium.
 A. stimulating
B. debilitating
C. deafening
D. enervating
E. soporific
F. precipitating

14. QUESTION 13
 Grandfather liked us children to learn self-discipline,
and, unlike many others of his generation, seldom
____ us even for those actions that we felt
deserved censure.
 A. rewarded
B. consoled
C. upbraided
D. applauded
E. cherished
F. chided

15. QUESTION 14
 To the layman, a philosopher who attempts to
elucidate a complex moral dilemma by reducing it
to a simple yet apparently ridiculous test case
seems rather to ____ the issue.
 A. ridicule
B. obfuscate
C. over-simplify
D. denigrate
E. becloud
F. attenuate

16. QUESTION 15
 Fraser taught by example: he ____ long-
windedness in his own lectures and berated his
students for any tendency toward circumlocution.
 A. eschewed
B. epitomized
C. accentuated
D. embraced
E. welcomed
F. shunned

17. QUESTION 16
 If he had not had the ____ to follow his own
iconoclastic theories in the face of the apparently
unassailable conclusion of the accepted experts in
the field, progress would have been inestimably
slower in this area of knowledge.
 A. incentive
B. audacity
C. temerity
D. incapacity
E. unwillingness
F. wisdom

18. QUESTION 17
 With an abiding interest in Medieval poetry, Boris
found it difficult to relate to his peers in school
whose ____ ran to nothing even remotely literary.
 A. predilections
B. successes
C. inclinations
D. backgrounds
E. achievements
F. amities

19. QUESTION 18
 The novel is admittedly not the finest example of its
genre, but I object to the ____ preface written by a
supposed expert on detective fiction from whom we
might have expected at least one or two perceptive
comments.
 A. egregious
B. inane
C. pretentious
D. subliminal
E. vacuous
F. unexamined

20. QUESTION 19
 It is not only the poor and uneducated that fall prey
to ____ ; desperate or unhappy individuals from
any walk of life or social background can be duped.
 A. mavericks
B. malcontents
C. quacks
D. charlatans
E. agitators
F. hypochondriacs

21. QUESTION 20
 The director, accustomed to unquestioning
loyalty, was chagrined when she discovered that
her directions had been ____ by the chief
executive.
 A. underscored
B. misinterpreted
C. undermined
D. misplaced
E. substantiated
F. subverted

22. ANSWERS
1. Bc
2. Ad
3. Be
4. Cf
5. Af
6. Be
7. Ab
8. De
9. Bd
10. De
11. Af
12. Bd
13. Cf
14. Be
15. Af
16. Bc
17. Ac
18. Be
19. Cd
20. Cf

23. THANK YOU