Quick Reference 4: Close Words With Different Meanings

Reference 4: Close Words With Different Meanings

Some questions are not about a second meaning at all. They are about choosing between two or three words that all point in roughly the same direction, where only one matches how far the sentence actually goes.

Family	Weaker or safer	Stronger or narrower	What decides it
Evidence	suggests, supports	demonstrates, proves	Does the evidence actually justify certainty, or only point toward a conclusion?
Opposition	questions, challenges	refutes	Was the claim only doubted, or was it actually shown to be false?
Effect	limits	prevents	Was the outcome reduced, or made completely impossible?
Novelty	unusual	unprecedented	Is the thing merely uncommon, or has it truly never occurred before?
Scope	primarily	exclusively	Mainly is not the same as only.
Probability	possible, likely	certain	A possibility is not an inevitability.
Stance	reserved, skeptical	dismissive	Caution about a claim is not the same as rejecting it outright.
Intensity	concerned	alarmed	A mild worry and genuine alarm are different reported states, not two words for the same feeling.

A biologist who questions a colleague’s interpretation has raised a doubt about it. A biologist who refutes it has shown it to be wrong, with evidence that settles the matter. A sentence reporting the first situation cannot correctly use the second word, however similar the two verbs sound in casual speech.

An engineer who calls a result “unusual” is describing something uncommon within a known range. Calling the same result “unprecedented” claims that nothing like it has been recorded before, a much larger claim that needs much larger evidence behind it.

A policy that limits emissions has reduced them. A policy that prevents emissions has stopped them entirely. A passage describing a partial reduction and an answer choice claiming prevention are describing two different outcomes, not the same outcome in different words.

Before choosing between two close words, name what would have to be true for the stronger one to be correct. If the passage does not actually establish that stronger fact, the weaker word is very likely the answer, regardless of which one sounds more impressive.