4000 CPE Vocabulary List

n. striking and vivid representation; picture
Colonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded 'the tableau of the whole,' whereupon the curtain again descended.

n. hill; relatively flat highland
The touristic village 'Le Campole' lies on a tableland close to the Apennine chain of Campania, at an altitude of 650 meters.

a. indicated or understood without expressed directly; not speaking; silent
We have a tacit agreement based on only a handshake.

a. silent or reserved in speech; saying little; not inclined to speak or converse
The stereotypical cowboy is a taciturn soul, answering lengthy questions with a 'Yep' or 'Nope.'

a. used for feeling; relating to a sense of touch; perceptible to the sense of touch; tangible
His callused hands had lost their tactile sensitivity.

n. a larval frog or toad
During the tadpole stage of the amphibian life cycle, most breathe through autonomous external or internal gills.

n. claw of a bird of prey; part of the lock that key presses to shoot bolt
The falconer wore a leather gauntlet to avoid being clawed by the hawk's talon.

a. peripheral; only slightly connected; digressing
Despite Clark's attempts to distract her with tangential remarks, Lois kept coming back to her main question: why couldn't he come out to dinner with Superman and her?.

v. tease; torture with disappointment; bait someone by showing something desirable but leaving them unsatisfied
Tom loved to tantalize his younger brother with candy; he knew the boy was forbidden to have it.

a. equivalent in effect or value
Though Rudy claimed his wife was off visiting friends, his shriek of horror when she walked into the room was tantamount to a confession that he believed she was dead.

v. give light as a small wax candle; narrow toward the point; become small toward one end
Financial aids generally taper off after the first year of college.

n. a heavy textile with a woven design
A tapestry is a form of textile art; it is woven by hand on a vertical loom.

a. late; delayed; moving slowly
We were kind of tardy with the hotel reservation, and the governor's suites are all booked.

n. tax on goods coming into a country
It would indicate how far the trade liberalization would go, but they would still have a heavy workload in negotiating detailed tariff cuts.

v. delay; leave slowly and hesitantly; wait
We can't tarry if we want to get to the airport on time.

a. torn into shreds; ragged; having ragged clothes; disordered or disrupted
I know he looks a bit of a rough diamond in his tattered jeans, but apparently, he does a lot of good work for local charities.

a. pulled or drawn tight; kept in trim shape; neat and tidy
The captain maintained that he ran a taut ship.

a. needlessly repetitious; using repetition or excessive wordiness
In the sentence 'It was visible to the eye,' the phrase 'to the eye' is tautological.

n. unnecessary repetition, especially for the same sense in different words; redundancy
'Joyful happiness' is an illustration of tautology.

n. building with a bar that is licensed to sell alcoholic drinks
The door comes out into that little close alley between the tavern and the old rattle trap of a brick store.