Use the Positive or Negative "Charges" of Words to Help You to Guess an Answer.
When all other vocabulary decoding strategies fail, use your ear. If you know a stem word sounds positive, for example, you know that its antonym must be negatively charged-and vice versa!
This strategy can work wonders on harder questions. Here's a sample tough antonym question.
Notice that SCABROUS sounds harsh-it has a negative (-) charge. Now let's check out the
charges of the answer choices. Both thorny and perplexing are negatively charged, so choices (1) and (3) cannot be antonyms of the stem word. The words blank and examined are neutral, they are neither positive or negative. The only positively charged word her is choice (2), unblemished. This is our answer; SCABROUS means rough or covered with unwholesome patches