GRE Verbal Reasoning Questions

1. When staying in a hotel, Bernard would arrange for his valet to bring him his newspaper in the dining room so that everyone would realize that he had a manservant; this (1)____ embarrassed his nephew who, though equally rich, preferred a more (2)____ life-style.

2. Although he was finally (1)____, the years of (2)____ tore apart his social circle, ruined his health and (3)____ his mind.

3. As Gerard (1)____ the (2)____ that greeted his work, he became increasingly smug.

4. It is a common complaint that people today have a short attention span. But is it that people are (1)____ if the television camera (2)____ a view, or is it that the (3)____ from one angle to another has trained the viewer to expect variety?

5. The (1)____ and virtuosity required of a jazz player make jazz seem to lack (2)____; this apparently amorphous flow can make it hard for people with traditional expectations of musical stability to acquire a taste for this genre.

6. An artist’s preliminary sketches are often a ____of a subject; on the basis of these sketches the artist makes a decision on his or her approach to the final painting.

7. Taking antibiotics for a viral infection may, it is true, be ____ ; however, in certain cases a course of these drugs can actually ward off opportunistic bacterial infections.

8. Rock music has often been credited with (or decried for) containing (1)____ messages, purportedly to influence the minds of (2)____ listeners.

9. It cannot be denied that without creative reasoning it would not have been possible to (1)____ of classical physics. Yet classical physics has no contribution to make to the understanding of (2)_____. This kind of (3)____ is surprisingly common in logic as well as in life.

10. During a decade of (1)____, social scientists sought to (2)____ the idea of the family as a healthy and stabilizing force, and replace it with the view that the family was (3)____.