Does the GRE use “synonyms” that are pretty far apart in meaning? If it does, what can I do to not miss them?
In GRE SE Quiz: Groups 01-32 #1 - OUTW’s question 11, onerous is a synonym of formidable. It does show up as a synonym in Google too. I know we were supposed to pick the closest synonym, but man, I couldn’t even tell they were synonyms despite knowing their definitions.
Onerous: adjective: (of a task or responsibility) involving a great deal of effort, trouble, or difficulty.
Formidable: adjective: inspiring fear or respect through being impressively large, powerful, intense, or capable.
I feel like I’ve bumped into a few “kinda synonyms” in other SE questions too, so this is worrying me a little.
On the harder level problems, the context of the sentence determines the level of “synonymity”
Onerous and Formidable aren’t the closest of synonyms without any context, but once the context of something such as - difficulty of a task - comes into the picture, then they are much closer
You’ll mostly find this style of hurdle on the higher difficulty SE questions
Same here. I do terribly in the GREGMAT quiz mainly as I always fail to identify seemingly unrelated words to be synonyms to each other, though I understand their definitions, just like you do. I also feel so lost.
But when I do actual SE questions, I don’t think there’s any difficulty in identifying synonym pairs. So I would just consider synonyms in the gregmat’s exercise to be at the most difficult level. If you master it, probably you can master the SE questions