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English 4 min read · 2025-11-09

Common 11+ English Vocabulary Worth Memorising

Twenty word families that show up on 11+ papers year after year — learn these and your child will recognise them on exam day.

While we don't recommend rote learning of arbitrary lists, certain word families crop up so often on 11+ papers that they're worth knowing. Here are some clusters worth exploring with your child.

Feeling and emotion

melancholy, despondent, jubilant, indignant, apprehensive, content, exasperated, wistful.

Description of character

generous, stingy, modest, arrogant, candid, evasive, meticulous, careless.

Physical world

luminous, opaque, dense, sparse, robust, fragile, conspicuous, subtle.

Action and movement

hesitate, lurch, stride, dart, linger, vanish, summon, retreat.

Practice now on vocabulary questions to see these in context. The key is meeting each word at least three times in different contexts — that's roughly when it sticks.

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