Choose the correct pair of meanings: "His story was credible, but his brother was credulous."

believable / too ready to believe

too ready to believe / believable

The idiom "to bell the cat" means:

To take a dangerous first step on behalf of others

Which sentence uses the word correctly?

The manuscript is invaluable, so the library insured it heavily.

The manuscript is invaluable, so the library discarded it.

The manuscript is invaluable, so the library insured it heavily.

The petrol is inflammable, so it cannot catch fire.

He was ingenuous enough to design a new engine.

"He is a notorious cricketer" is odd because notorious:

Means widely known, but always for something bad

Can only describe places, not people

Which vocabulary study method is most effective for retention?

Forty words a week, revised on days 1, 3 and 7 and used in your own sentences

Reading a thousand-word alphabetical list once a month

Forty words a week, revised on days 1, 3 and 7 and used in your own sentences

Copying dictionary definitions verbatim

Learning only the words that appeared last year

Vocabulary & Verbal Ability — Synonyms, Antonyms, Idioms and One-Word Substitution

Roughly 15 to 18 of the 50 questions in Section IA are pure vocabulary, and they are the only questions in the whole paper you can bank before you walk in. They are also the fastest: fifteen seconds each against nearly two minutes for a comprehension question, so the vocabulary block funds the time you will need for the passages. The trap is that most students prepare by reading long alphabetical word lists, forget nine-tenths of them, and gain almost nothing. This chapter takes the opposite route — roots, prefixes and word families — because one root unlocks a dozen words and cannot be forgotten as easily as a list.

Roots and Prefixes — Where the Real Leverage Is

English borrows most of its academic vocabulary from Latin and Greek, so an unfamiliar word is usually a familiar root wearing a new coat. Learn the root and you can make a confident guess at a word you have never seen — which, under +5/−1, is exactly the difference between attempting and skipping.

High-yield roots, and the family each one opens
Root	Means	Words it gives you
bene / mal	good / bad	benevolent, benefactor, benign · malevolent, malice, malady, malign
loqu / loc / dict	speak, say	loquacious, eloquent, soliloquy, elocution · dictate, edict, verdict, indict
cred	believe	credible, incredulous, credulous, credentials, credo
phil / phobia	love / fear	philanthropy, bibliophile, Anglophile · xenophobia, hydrophobia, claustrophobia
vor / cide	eat / kill	carnivore, herbivore, voracious · homicide, regicide, patricide, insecticide
anthrop / arch	man / rule	anthropology, misanthrope · monarchy, oligarchy, anarchy, matriarch
pac / bel	peace / war	pacify, pacifist · belligerent, bellicose, rebel, antebellum

🧠 Guessing an unseen word from its parts

Take misanthrope. You may never have met it, but mis- appears in mistrust and misogyny (dislike), and anthrop in anthropology (man). Dislike + man = one who hates people. Now the options resolve themselves. The same works for magnanimous (magna = great, anim = spirit → generous), soporific (sopor = sleep → sleep-inducing) and taciturn (tac = silent → reserved in speech). One caution: prefixes lie sometimes. Invaluable does not mean "not valuable" — it means priceless — and inflammable means easily set on fire, not fireproof. So use roots to narrow to two options, then let the sentence decide.

The Confused Pairs the NTA Returns To

A whole family of questions turns on two words that look almost identical and mean quite different things. These recur across years because they separate a candidate who has read from one who has memorised.

Learn these as pairs, never singly
Pair	The distinction
credible / credulous	credible = believable (the story); credulous = too ready to believe (the listener)
eminent / imminent	eminent = distinguished; imminent = about to happen
principal / principle	principal = chief (or head of a school); principle = a rule or belief
stationary / stationery	stationary = not moving; stationery = paper and pens (e for envelope)
complement / compliment	complement = completes something; compliment = praise (i for "I like it")
ingenious / ingenuous	ingenious = clever; ingenuous = innocent and frank
historic / historical	historic = important in history; historical = merely belonging to the past
famous / notorious	Both mean widely known — but notorious is always for something bad

⚠️ Antonym questions are where careless marks vanish

Two things go wrong. First, candidates read "antonym" as "synonym" in a hurry — and because the paper often places a synonym question immediately before an antonym one, the momentum carries them into the wrong answer. Underline the word ANTONYM before you look at the options. Second, an antonym must match in part of speech and intensity. The opposite of frugal (careful with money) is extravagant, not rich — rich is a different dimension altogether, and wasteful is closer but weaker than the intended pair. Ask yourself: opposite along which axis?

Idioms and One-Word Substitution

An idiom cannot be worked out from its parts — that is what makes it an idiom — so this is the one area where memorising is the method. The good news is that the tested set is small and stable, and most idioms cluster around a handful of images: body parts, animals, weather, money.

Frequently set idioms
Idiom	Meaning
to turn a deaf ear	to refuse to listen
to smell a rat	to suspect something wrong
to bell the cat	to take a dangerous first step for others
a wild goose chase	a hopeless, pointless pursuit
to make both ends meet	to live within one's income
once in a blue moon	very rarely
to bury the hatchet	to make peace after a quarrel
to let the cat out of the bag	to reveal a secret accidentally

One-word substitution — grouped so they stick
Description	Word
One who does not believe in God	Atheist (agnostic = holds it unknowable)
One who loves mankind	Philanthropist (opposite: misanthrope)
A speech made to oneself	Soliloquy
A government by the few	Oligarchy (by none = anarchy)
Words written on a tomb	Epitaph (epigraph = inscription on a building)
One who eats too much	Glutton (voracious = the adjective)
A person who is easily deceived	Gullible / credulous
A cure for all diseases	Panacea

🎯 Why forty words a week beats a thousand-word list

Memory works by retrieval, not exposure. Reading a list of a thousand words feels productive and leaves almost nothing behind, because you never had to pull any word back out of your head. Forty words a week, revised on days 1, 3 and 7 and used in a sentence of your own, will still be there in March. Over the six months before the paper that is about a thousand words you actually own, rather than five thousand you have merely seen — and this is the same spacing logic the app's revision schedule uses, so add the words you get wrong to your notebook and let the intervals do the work.

Key takeaways

About 15–18 of 50 questions in Section IA are vocabulary — the only bankable marks in the paper.
Learn roots, not lists: bene/mal, loqu/dict, cred, phil/phobia, vor/cide, anthrop/arch, pac/bel.
Prefixes can mislead — invaluable means priceless, inflammable means easily burnt.
Learn confused words in pairs: credible/credulous, eminent/imminent, ingenious/ingenuous.
An antonym must match in part of speech and intensity — frugal opposes extravagant, not rich.
Underline the word ANTONYM before reading options; the paper places synonyms right before them.
Idioms cannot be derived from their parts, so they must be memorised — but the tested set is small.
Forty words a week revised on days 1, 3 and 7 beats a thousand-word list you only read once.

Practice questions (8)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

A person who hates mankind is a:
1. Philanthropist
2. Misanthrope
3. Misogynist
4. Anthropologist
Show answer
Answer: B — Misanthrope
mis- (dislike) + anthrop (man) = misanthrope. A philanthropist loves mankind, a misogynist dislikes women specifically, and an anthropologist merely studies humans. This is exactly the kind of question roots let you answer without ever having met the word.
Choose the correct pair of meanings: "His story was credible, but his brother was credulous."
1. believable / too ready to believe
2. too ready to believe / believable
3. praiseworthy / doubtful
4. doubtful / trustworthy
Show answer
Answer: A — believable / too ready to believe
Credible describes the thing said — it is believable. Credulous describes the person listening — too ready to believe. Both come from the root cred (believe), which is why they are so easily swapped, and why the pair must be learnt together rather than one at a time.
The most appropriate antonym of "frugal" is:
1. Rich
2. Extravagant
3. Poor
4. Generous
Show answer
Answer: B — Extravagant
Frugal means careful with money, so its opposite lies on the spending axis — extravagant. Rich and poor describe how much money one has, a different dimension entirely, and generous is about giving rather than spending. Always ask: opposite along which axis?
The idiom "to bell the cat" means:
1. To warn others of danger
2. To take a dangerous first step on behalf of others
3. To make a great deal of noise
4. To reveal a secret
Show answer
Answer: B — To take a dangerous first step on behalf of others
From the fable in which mice agree a bell should be tied on the cat but none dares do it. Note the distinct idiom "to let the cat out of the bag", which is the one that means revealing a secret — the two are frequently offered as each other's distractors.
Which sentence uses the word correctly?
1. The manuscript is invaluable, so the library discarded it.
2. The manuscript is invaluable, so the library insured it heavily.
3. The petrol is inflammable, so it cannot catch fire.
4. He was ingenuous enough to design a new engine.
Show answer
Answer: B — The manuscript is invaluable, so the library insured it heavily.
Invaluable means priceless, not worthless, so heavy insurance follows naturally. Inflammable means easily set on fire, so option 3 contradicts itself, and designing an engine calls for ingenious (clever), not ingenuous (innocent). These are the standard prefix traps.
A government by a small privileged group is called:
1. Anarchy
2. Monarchy
3. Oligarchy
4. Matriarchy
Show answer
Answer: C — Oligarchy
The root arch means rule: olig- (few) → oligarchy, mono- (one) → monarchy, an- (none) → anarchy, matri- (mother) → matriarchy. One root and four prefixes give you the whole family, which is why root-learning outperforms list-learning.
"He is a notorious cricketer" is odd because notorious:
1. Means unknown to the public
2. Means widely known, but always for something bad
3. Can only describe places, not people
4. Is a noun and not an adjective
Show answer
Answer: B — Means widely known, but always for something bad
Famous and notorious both mean widely known, but notorious carries a negative reason — a notorious criminal, not a notorious cricketer, unless you mean he is known for misconduct. Pairs that share a denotation but differ in connotation are a favourite question type.
Which vocabulary study method is most effective for retention?
1. Reading a thousand-word alphabetical list once a month
2. Forty words a week, revised on days 1, 3 and 7 and used in your own sentences
3. Copying dictionary definitions verbatim
4. Learning only the words that appeared last year
Show answer
Answer: B — Forty words a week, revised on days 1, 3 and 7 and used in your own sentences
Memory strengthens through retrieval, not exposure. Reading a long list never forces you to pull a word back out of your head, so almost nothing stays; spaced revision plus your own sentence does force retrieval. Over six months this yields about a thousand words you own rather than five thousand you have merely seen.