Just about every GRE test-taker is looking for an easy way to learn GRE vocabulary, and for good reason. Memorizing GRE vocabulary words is an essential part of studying for the Verbal sections of the GRE exam, and there are a TON of vocab words to learn. Even students who are starting their GRE prep with a broad lexicon generally need to devote a significant amount of study time to learning new words and brushing up on the definitions of words they’re already familiar with.

In this article, we’ll discuss not only how to memorize GRE vocabulary and engage in vocabulary practice, but also how to learn GRE words easily, how to learn GRE words faster, and how many words to learn for GRE Verbal. This is your ultimate GRE vocabulary study guide.

To start, let’s discuss a very important principle that every GRE student should keep in mind when studying vocabulary for the GRE: the law of diminishing returns.


Every test-taker studying GRE Verbal hopes to learn as much as possible in as little time as possible and raise his or her Verbal score as high as possible. Those are worthy goals. The thing is, there is only so much new information we can cram into our brains at once before the information stops sticking or we get burned out. In other words, the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and eventually we get negative returns on our investment of time and energy.

GRE vocab study is one of those areas where students are particularly susceptible to the law of diminishing returns, for a couple of reasons. For one, students are generally nervous about studying vocabulary for the GRE, because they know that they will have to learn a large number of words. So, they figure that trying to learn hundreds of new words each week or studying vocabulary for hours and hours each day is the only option.

Secondly, studying vocabulary is a bit different from studying other GRE topics because it is primarily a memorization task. Yes, there are important ways (which we’ll discuss) to make learning new words a more active process, and thus make the information stick more readily. But the fact is, for much of your GRE vocab study, you’re not going to be engaging with and applying concepts or exercising your logical reasoning skills in the way that you will when studying, say, Reading Comprehension or working on Quantitative Comparison problems.

Because learning vocab words is more memorization-heavy than other types of GRE study, there is only so much of it we can pack in at once before our brains get overloaded. The good news is, if we study vocab words the right way, we’re actually capable of adding to our vocabularies substantially. So, let’s discuss how much of your GRE prep time should be devoted to studying vocabulary.


The first thing to know about studying GRE vocabulary words is that it is essential that you do it every day. If you are studying vocabulary only intermittently — say, a few days a week or in long sessions on the weekends — your progress will likewise be only intermittent. When learning GRE vocab words, your goal should be steady, continuous progress. Building your GRE vocabulary knowledge is a cumulative process, just as studying Verbal concepts and strategies is. You’re simply not going to get the exposure to GRE words you need if you’re not studying vocabulary on a daily basis.

On the other hand, studying vocab words should not make up the bulk of your GRE Verbal prep each day. First, as we’ve already discussed, there is only so much time you can spend learning new words in one sitting or one day (or one week) before you’re not really learning anything anymore.

Second, although learning GRE words is a crucial part of your GRE Verbal prep, simply memorizing a vocabulary list is not going to single-handedly get you a great Verbal score. Many students make the mistake of thinking that all they need to do to prepare for GRE Verbal is memorize a bunch of vocab words. Of course, to earn an impressive GRE Verbal score, there are numerous concepts, skills, and strategies test-takers must master in addition to memorizing the definitions of GRE vocabulary words.


In general, a good place for many GRE students to start is aiming for about 30 minutes of dedicated GRE vocab study each day. So, if for example on weekdays you engage in GRE study for two hours each day, a quarter of your total study time will be devoted to just studying vocabulary.

Of course, every GRE student starts from a different place, has different goals, and learns at a different rate, so 30 minutes may not be the right starting point for you. For instance, if you are a nonnative English speaker who knows that vocabulary is a weak area for you, consider starting with 45 minutes of dedicated vocab study each day, and adjust as necessary from there. On the other hand, if you know that vocab is one of your strong suits, you could start off doing 20 minutes of dedicated vocab study each day, so you can focus more on other areas of your GRE prep.

The important thing is that, regardless of where you start, you periodically assess your progress as you go and make adjustments sooner rather than later. If you find that you’re having trouble moving past easy-level Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence questions, or you’re frequently getting questions wrong because you don’t know the definitions of GRE words, you may need to increase your dedicated vocab study.

Just remember, you don’t want to burn yourself out trying to learn, for example, 50 new GRE words each day. It could be that an added 15 minutes per day of vocab study is just what you need to see a marked improvement in your Verbal performance. However, there is a limit. It also could be that you need to have a more realistic timeline for learning all the words you need to learn.

With that in mind, let’s talk about how many words to learn for GRE Verbal.


A large part of being successful in GRE Verbal is having a solid base of vocabulary knowledge, which requires knowing a vast number of GRE vocab words, possibly 1,000 words or more.

Now, your starting base of knowledge will affect how many new GRE words you actually need to learn. However, it’s important to realize that, given the large number of words that could appear on the exam (and the fact that no one can predict exactly which words will appear), even if you already have a broad vocabulary, you probably will still need to study a few hundred vocab words over the course of your GRE prep.

As you can imagine, memorizing so many vocabulary words can be a tedious process. Fortunately, there are some tactics we can use to make GRE vocab study as engaging and effective as possible. So, let’s discuss some key vocab-building strategies.