A lot of students immediately think of vocabulary when they hear the word SAT. But are SAT vocab words really that important for doing well on the test? Kind of. If you’re aiming for a high score, you’ll definitely want to spend some time learning key SAT words.
In this guide, we give you a comprehensive list of 262 of the most common SAT vocabulary words. We also explain how vocab is tested on the SAT, what types of questions you’ll see, and how to get the most out of your vocab prep.
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The SAT has undergone a number of overhauls over the years that have made vocabulary a far less important part of the test. There are fewer vocabulary questions on the current SAT than there were on older versions of the exam, which include question types like analogies that focused solely on testing vocab knowledge.
That said, it'll still benefit you to study vocab, especially if you're aiming for a high or perfect score .
All SAT words are about medium difficulty and are tested in the context of reading passages, so you’ll get not just a sentence but an entire paragraph or passage to work with.
Context clues make memorizing SAT vocab words less important on the current SAT than it was on the old SAT, back when you had to memorize dozens of obscure words and answer questions that dealt with isolated sentences (these were called Sentence Completion problems). This made vocab questions particularly hard since you were given minimal context with which to solve them.
The new digital SAT has one Reading and Writing section broken into four domains: Craft and Structure, Information and Ideas, Standard English Conventions, and Expression of Ideas. Only one domain, Craft and Structure, includes vocabulary as a tested skill.
According to College Board's description of this domain, "Students will use comprehension, vocabulary, analysis, synthesis, and reasoning skills and knowledge to understand and use high-utility words and phrases in context, evaluate texts rhetorically, and make connections between topically related texts."
There are approximately 13-15 questions total in this domain, which makes up about 28 percent of the Reading and Writing section of the SAT. But as you can see from the description, vocabulary is not tested in isolation, but in context . That means you won't see a vocabulary word and then be asked to choose the correct definition. Instead, you'll be tested on whether you can use context clues to interpret certain vocabulary words and understand the meaning of a phrase or passage.
It will help to know alternative meanings of relatively common words, such as “directly” and “hold.” While you might come across slightly more difficult SAT words, you generally shouldn’t see any as hard as those on the old SAT.
Here's an example of a Reading vocabulary question (with the relevant part of the passage shown):
In addition to Words in Context questions, you’ll get questions that require you to pick a single word or phrase in order to paraphrase or clarify part of a passage. With these questions, you must understand what all the SAT vocab words mean so that you can choose the right answer.
Here are some examples of these questions:
A sample SAT question with single vocab words as answer choices. (Source: Official SAT Practice Test #1)
A sample SAT question with phrases as answer choices. (Source: Official SAT Practice Test #2)
In these examples, you'll need to know the definitions of a variety of SAT vocabulary words, such as “substantiated,” “freewheeling,” and “scandalous,” so that you can select the right answer choice.
Now that you know how vocabulary plays a role on the SAT, let's go over the 262 words and definitions we suggest knowing if you want to get a high score on SAT Reading and Writing.
To compile this list, we dug through all official SAT practice tests, looking at both the Reading and Writing sections (and not just the questions but the answer choices and passages, too). We also looked at SAT words from other online vocab lists.
Though you don’t need to memorize all the words below, familiarizing yourself with most of them should help you better identify the tones of passages and make you more efficient at interpreting and answering questions correctly on SAT Reading and Writing.
Below, we give you each word, its part of speech, its definition, and an example sentence (or more if the word has multiple definitions/parts of speech). All words are listed in alphabetical order.
