GRE Vocabulary: Attitudes

Beside the dinosaur case, the ebullient docent greeted every visitor with a bright hello and almost bounced.

He compared the grand statue to a pigeon perch in a sardonic aside, and several students snorted.

Jonah answered the toppled model with a nonchalant wave and said he could rebuild it before lunch.

The director, irascible after one missed cue, went red-faced and shouted for silence.

The new clerk thanked the archivist in a deferential tone before asking to see the map.

Once the comet entered the telescope, the club grew euphoric and talked over one another in delight.

A melancholy hush followed the diary's last page, and nobody reached for the light switch.

Watching the paper boats drift away, Elena grew wistful and said she missed the creek behind her old school.

Luis asked that the smaller cities be restored, indignant that the chart had omitted them.

Mispronouncing the poet's name left Adele chagrined, so she stopped, apologized, and tried the line again.

The field crew was elated when the soil sample matched the map they had trusted all week.

Friends received only shrugs from the morose captain after rain canceled the match.

Still clapping in the aisle after the quartet's encore, the audience was jubilant.

The inventor folded the rejection and, despondent, left every workshop light off.

Outside the seminar room, Nia paced with her notes, apprehensive about the oral defense.

The column was cynical about the charity's sunny slogan and treated it as cover for a fundraising quota.

Professor Ortiz was skeptical of the round number and asked which count had produced it.

The editor answered the sloppy bibliography with a contemptuous sniff and slid the pages back.

Near the handwritten score, visitors grew reverent and leaned in without touching the glass.

The referee gave a dismissive shrug and called the protest too minor to stop play.

He was dogmatic about the date, repeating 1812 and refusing to look at the contradictory letter.

Her conciliatory email admitted the sharp tone and asked whether they could revise the draft together.

The review sounded antagonistic, treating the neighboring lab's method as an insult rather than a different choice.

Derisive hoots answered the claim that the hill was too steep for any bicycle.

The debate judge sounded incredulous and asked the speaker to read the quotation a second time.

Amina was sanguine about the seeds and told the class most of them would sprout by Friday.

The memoir summary was jaundiced, painting every gift as a bid for praise.

Without cheering for the hypothesis, the dispassionate abstract listed what worked and what failed.

The town archivist made an impassioned plea for neighbors to help carry boxes out of the flooded basement.

At the microphone the poet was diffident, giving short answers and watching the floor.

The opener was truculent, daring the panel to find a single flaw and looking disappointed when the dare was accepted.

Asked to wait until the paint dried, the child answered with a petulant stamp of the foot.

Font, margins, and staples all drew complaints in the querulous memo.

The rehearsal paused on a plaintive phrase in the oboe line.

Whispers turned doleful in the lobby when the gallery said the show would close at noon.

Though the paintings were only in another room, the tour guide stayed lugubrious and sighed over every empty frame.

Last Tuesday's picnic was enough to make the speech maudlin, and the speaker grew weepy.

The caption turned nostalgic as it recalled chalk dust in the classroom that is now a lab.

The writer was rueful about the missing footnote and marked a correction on the proofs.

James, contrite after speaking over the question, sat down and asked the student to start again.

One kind review left the team complacent, and they skipped the check their own protocol required.

Calling the question naive, the supercilious note did not bother to answer it.

One disdainful look sent the handwritten draft back into the folder.

Tiny words and a slow tour of the axis made his explanation of the chart condescending.

The intern was so obsequious that he praised two suggestions which contradicted each other.

Wisdom far beyond one afternoon of comments filled the servile preface to the editor.

She admitted the diagram helped, but the credit was begrudging and she sounded unhappy to say so.

Malik was resentful that his paragraph had lost its byline and asked for the name to be restored.

While they waited for their own microscope, the students looked envious of the new one on the next bench.

Volunteers were zealous about the archive and labeled each box twice so no field note would be misfiled.

A margin note, fervent in its wording, begged the next reader to keep the brittle map out of sunlight.

The clapping was tepid, fading after a few seconds, and the speaker saw that the room was unconvinced.

When someone asked who would take the minutes, the only reply was an apathetic shrug.

Rosa was indifferent to the prize and kept reading when her name was called.

A month of similar abstracts left the reviewer jaded, and he skimmed because he expected nothing new.

After years of passing the chapel, the senior was blasé about another campus tour and barely looked up.

The unexpected question left the speaker nonplussed, and she paused with nothing ready to say.

A sudden change of topic left Omar bemused, and he blinked and asked which century they were discussing.

Spilled ink on the manuscript left Helen abashed, and she covered the spot while whispering an apology.

Noticing her sweater was inside out, Keisha was mortified and slipped into the cloakroom to fix it.

Mateo kept drawing through a smudge on the sketch, grinning in an insouciant way.

The technician was livid at the erased data, speaking in a tight voice with both hands flat on the table.

Sneers at the author's motives, rather than any comment on the evidence, showed the animus in the letter.

Until someone came back from the store, the forlorn puppy sat by the empty food bowl and whined.

The photographer was aghast at the cracked lens and stopped the shoot rather than risk another frame.

Mold on the rare pamphlets left the librarian appalled, so she closed the box and called conservation.

Skipping the citation gave her a compunction, and she went back to add the author's name.

The rehearsal ended on a dolorous chord, and the singers left without the usual chatter.

Remembering the closed bookshop and the bell over its door, the essay took an elegiac tone.

No one joked about the delay while a saturnine quiet hung over the waiting room.

The host was solicitous about the visiting scholar's cough, bringing tea and asking if the room was too cold.

Objections in the margin were vehement, and the underlining was heavy enough to nearly tear the paper.

The clerk stayed impassive, taking the form and showing no reaction while the complaint went on.

Mr. Rahman was stoic about the flat tire and changed it in the rain without a complaint.

Even after the beaker tipped, the student stayed phlegmatic, wiped the bench, and set the beaker upright.

While others argued, Dr. Chen remained equanimous and then summarized both views fairly.

The pianist stayed imperturbable when the fire alarm chirped a test and kept the soft passage steady.

Simone sat in the middle of the group yet stayed aloof, answering the heated debate with cool distance.

By the third hour of the lecture, ennui had settled in, and several students stared at the clock.

Within a single paragraph his comments turned mercurial, swinging from warm praise to sharp scorn.

The cast left the rehearsal buoyant, humming the finale down the stairwell.

Louder than the lawn music, exuberant children raced between the sprinklers and laughed.

Chatter about the fossil hunt was so effervescent that the whole van kept laughing.

She read the grant letter twice and laughed, exultant at the news.

When the boastful robot tipped over, a ripple of schadenfreude passed through the class, though no one wished the machine broken.

Everyone laughed at the facetious warning that a goldfish would grade the quizzes, and then the teacher opened the real rubric.

A shrug and a flippant reply brushed off the safety check, so the supervisor asked the question again more firmly.

The cartoon was irreverent, giving the solemn monument a pair of sunglasses and a grin.

When the errand she had called quick took an hour, a wry smile crossed her face.

No kinder line appeared in the caustic review, which called the plot a damp cracker.

In the workshop, acerbic comments cut at the weak ending, though the speaker's voice stayed quiet.

A single dry sentence of mordant wit in the footnote mocked the grand claim.

Personal insults filled the vitriolic thread, which never mentioned the article's data.

Every missed step in the drill appeared in the scathing report, which called the result unacceptable.

Several careful amateurs winced at being called hobbyists in a pejorative aside, after years of logging the migration.

She frowned at every proposed morning meeting, and that frown showed her antipathy toward the new schedule.

He left the seminar early after he took umbrage at a footnote that described his method as quaint.

Night shifts and patients' thank-you notes filled the laudatory citation for the nurse.

Even the author looked uneasy when the adulatory introduction compared a first novel to a classic.

The student was penitent about the broken beaker and offered to replace it from the lab fund.

Because the timer had failed, an apologetic note on the oven explained that the bread would be late.

Before anyone complained, the speaker grew defensive about the short bibliography and insisted the sources were enough.

After the noisy rehearsal, a propitiatory basket of pears appeared on the neighbor's step.

The captain's handshake was magnanimous in defeat, and the congratulations sounded sincere.

Only one proposal received praise in the partisan summary, which skipped the strengths of the other three.

The moderator was partial, chuckling at one side's jokes and cutting the other side off.

Guides who had spent the morning marking exits were worried by his cavalier dismissal of the evacuation map.