As another example, imagine the word “relentless.” We might identify the suffix “-less,” which indicates the absence of something. The root would be either “relent” or “lent,” with the possible prefix “re-.” A student of Latin, French, or Spanish might recognize that the syllable “lent” could have something to do with the idea of being slow. The possible prefix “re-” might have something to do with the idea of repeating an action, or in some other way strengthening an idea. So we might eventually get the idea that the word “relentless” means something related to an absence of slowing or stopping—again, this doesn’t fully spell out the meaning of the word on its own, but it could very well give us a strong idea of whether “relentless” might be appropriate for a particular question.
Let’s try one more example, this time with the word “kindred.” “Kindred” doesn’t seem to have any kind of familiar suffix or root. We might look at this word and wonder if it’s related to the word “kind,” or the word “kindle.” But neither of those seems promising, especially because they would involve something along the lines of “-red” as a suffix, and that wouldn’t really make a lot of sense because we can’t think of any other words where “-red” is a suffix. So if we ran into the word “kindred” in an answer choice and didn’t already know what it meant, we would probably have little choice but to try to work around it and hope that we could figure some things out about some other words. As I said before, this strategy of taking words apart isn’t always going to work, and we won’t always be able to figure out a correct answer when we don’t know some of the words in a question. Often we will, but sometimes we won’t. That’s just the way the test goes. Remember that it’s still possible to score well in the 700+ range on the Critical Reading section even if you omit 6 or 7 of the Sentence Completion questions on the test.
And when you’re taking words apart and trying to get an idea of what they might mean, consider the following strategy, as well.
Don’t Forget Cultural References
Sometimes you can figure out roughly what a word means based on its similarity to a brand name, or even to words in popular novels, songs, or movies. Don’t shy away from those connections, even if it might feel a little silly to use something from a Harry Potter novel to answer a question on the SAT.
When you try to use these references, remember that you’re not trying to figure out what a word actually means; all you’re trying to figure out is whether it’s likely to be able to mean what it would need to mean to be the right answer.
For example, I had a student once who was working on a double-blank question in which she eliminated three of the answer choices, but was having a difficult time choosing between the last two, because she didn’t feel like she knew any of the words in either choice. But she knew from the structure of the sentence that the word in the second blank needed to be a negative-sounding word, and she saw that one of the answer choices had the word “prudent” for that second blank.
While she didn’t know the word “prudent” itself, she did recall that she had seen television commercials for a company called “Prudential.” She reasoned, correctly, that a company wouldn’t name itself something negative—nobody would call their company a name that meant “Horrible Company, Incorporated.” She also knew that the suffix “-ial” didn’t change the overall meaning of the word. So if “Prudential” was a positive-sounding word, then “prudent” probably wasn’t a negative-sounding word . . . which meant it wasn’t the right answer for the second blank in this particular question. She eliminated that answer choice and chose the remaining one, and got the question right.
Note that she still didn’t actually know what the word “prudent” meant by the time she was done with the question. She only knew it didn’t fit the sentence, which was all she needed to know. And this brings us to our next strategy.
Don’t Feel Bias Towards A Word Just Because You Know It
I cannot tell you how many times a test-taker has told me he chose an answer for a Sentence Completion question simply because he knew what it meant.
Let me say, very clearly, that knowing the meaning of a word is ABSOLUTELY NOT a good enough reason for picking that word on a Sentence Completion question. The College Board is not obligated to make the correct answer be a word you know, so the fact that you know a word does not increase the likelihood that the word is the right answer.