GRE VERBAL ABILITY - ANALOGIES

An analogy question gives you a pair of words; from a list of five other pairs you pick the one that most nearly matches the relationship of the original pair.

For example, let's look at a word pair:

CRUMB : BREAD ::

This is a well-known example analogy that has been used for years on test instructions. It's clear how these words relate: a crumb is a piece of bread.

Directions

Choose the answer key which contains a pair of words with a relationship most similar to the relationship between the pair of words in capital letters.

Example:

AVIARY : BIRDS

(A) den : lions
(B) coop : chickens
(C) school : fish
(D) desert : camel
(E) garden : weeds

Now let's think about what might make a good second word pair that has the same relationship. What if, among the answer choices, you saw the word pair:

SPLINTER : WOOD

Just as a crumb is a piece of bread, a splinter is a piece of wood.

n what ways could two words be related?

There are lots of ways. The relationship will always have to do with the meaning of the words. The relationship never involves the number of letters in the words, or whether they rhyme or something like that. Here are some examples of possible relationships between the two words in an analogy question:

• Synonyms or antonyms
• A part to the whole
• A member to the category that contains it
• Cause to effect (or effect to cause)
• Varying degrees of a quantity or quality (for example, one thing is a larger version of the other)

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