The November 2026 SAT Vocab Survey + Quiz US Version 1

With the help of reports from students and Reddit's r/SAT, I've compiled the most common and challenging vocabulary from the November 2026 SAT US Version 1. I've put these into a quiz format so students and parents can challenge themselves. Good luck!

SAT Vocabulary November 2026 US - Version 1 - Warm-up Reading Passage

Instructions: Read this passage carefully before taking your quiz. All 12 vocabulary words from the November 2026 US SAT (Version 1) appear in context. Pay attention to how each word is used naturally in the story.

The Marsh Count

Every January, volunteers at the Pelican Bay preserve count the wading birds that winter in its marshes. For decades the numbers barely changed. Then, in 2023, the count dropped by almost half.

Biologist Rosa Lindqvist was asked to explain why. She began by scrutinizing thirty years of tally sheets. Some held copious notes on weather and tides; others contained little more than numbers. She quickly found inconsistencies: some years volunteers counted at dawn, others at noon, when many birds were away feeding.

Still, the 2023 drop was too large to blame on timing alone. Rosa suspected an incipient problem in the marsh itself. Water samples showed rising salt levels, likely from a new drainage canal upstream.

The county's development office disagreed. Its director, an obstinate man who had approved the canal, insisted the decline was ephemeral. "Bird numbers go up and down," he said.

Rosa needed more than a hunch to substantiate her theory. She partnered with a university lab that tracked salt levels hourly. The data showed a clear pattern: the saltier a section of marsh, the fewer birds fed there.

At the public hearing, the dissonance between the two sides was obvious. The director spoke about jobs and housing; Rosa spoke about the remarkable multifariousness of the marsh, home to more than two hundred species. Residents found her data far more credible than his reassurances.

The county agreed to install a gate on the canal to ameliorate the salt problem. Rosa added one caveat: the marsh might take years to recover, and the count could keep falling before it rose.

Last January, for the first time since 2022, it went up.

Vocabulary words practiced: ameliorate, inconsistency, obstinate, ephemeral, dissonance, incipient, copious, substantiate, caveat, scrutinize, credible, multifariousness