The October 2025 SAT Vocab Survey + Quiz - Int Version Round 1

With the help of reports from Reddit's r/SAT, I’ve compiled a list of the most common and challenging vocabulary from the October 2025 International SAT. I've put these into a quiz format for students and parents to challenge themselves. Good luck!

SAT Vocabulary October 2025 International - Round 1 - Warm-up Reading Passage

Instructions: Read this passage carefully before taking your quiz. All 18 vocabulary words from October 2025 International SAT Round 1 appear in context. Pay attention to how each word is used naturally in the story.

The Climate Summit

Dr. Amara Okonkwo had witnessed a succession of failed environmental conferences over her twenty-year career as a climate scientist. Each summit promised breakthrough agreements; each ended in diplomatic stalemate. But this year's gathering in Singapore felt different—there was a genuine convergence of interests among nations that had previously stood at opposite ends of the negotiating table.

The opening ceremony featured an extemporaneous address by the Secretary-General, who abandoned her prepared remarks to speak directly about the flooding that had displaced millions across Southeast Asia just weeks earlier. Her impromptu words moved delegates more than any scripted speech could have. The applause that followed denotes something Dr. Okonkwo had rarely seen at such events: authentic emotional engagement rather than polite diplomatic protocol.

The scientific rigor of the latest IPCC report left little room for denial. The evidence was meticulous in its documentation—every temperature reading verified, every sea-level measurement cross-referenced, every extinction timeline supported by multiple independent studies. Even the most skeptical delegations could not dismiss findings assembled with such extraordinary precision and care.

Initially, the United States delegation oscillated between supporting aggressive emissions targets and protecting domestic industries. Their position wavered dramatically from session to session, leaving other nations uncertain about American intentions. But as the evidence mounted and public pressure intensified, the lead negotiator finally acquiesced to the binding framework, accepting terms she had initially rejected as economically devastating.

Throughout the negotiations, various non-governmental organizations served as proxies for populations who had no direct voice at the table—indigenous communities, island nations facing submersion, and future generations who would inherit whatever world today's leaders chose to create. These representatives spoke on behalf of millions who could not speak for themselves.

Dr. Okonkwo remained ambivalent about certain provisions in the draft agreement. She had mixed feelings about the carbon trading mechanisms, which seemed to offer wealthy nations an easy escape from genuine emissions reductions. Yet she understood that perfect agreements rarely survive contact with political reality.

The language of the financial sections proved deliberately opaque. The dense, technical phrasing made it nearly impossible for ordinary citizens to understand how trillions of dollars would actually flow between nations—a deliberate obscurity that troubled transparency advocates but pleased finance ministers who preferred to operate away from public scrutiny.

Some analysts dismissed the summit as mere contrivance—an elaborately staged performance designed to create the appearance of action without requiring genuine sacrifice. These critics argued that the conference was an artificial arrangement meant to placate environmental activists while preserving business as usual for fossil fuel interests.

Such skepticism served as deterrents against excessive optimism. These cautionary voices prevented delegates from celebrating prematurely or overlooking critical weaknesses in the proposed framework. Their warnings, though unwelcome, performed an essential function.

The major breakthroughs came when smaller nations deferred to the scientific consensus rather than protecting narrow national interests. By yielding to expert authority, these delegations created space for compromise that the major powers had been unable to achieve on their own.

Climate concerns were increasingly intermingled with economic development priorities in ways that made pure environmental policy impossible. Green technology investments became tangled together with trade negotiations, intellectual property disputes, and infrastructure loans—a complex web that defied simple solutions.

The extreme weather events of the past year had become catalysts for political will that decades of scientific warnings had failed to generate. These disasters accelerated change in ways that research papers and documentary films never could. Sometimes tragedy accomplishes what reason cannot.

During the final negotiating session, an inconspicuous aide passed a note to the Chinese delegation that apparently changed their position entirely. Whatever message she delivered went unnoticed by the press corps but transformed the dynamics of the room within minutes.

By the summit's conclusion, the initial resistance from oil-producing nations had significantly abated. The fierce opposition that characterized early sessions gradually subsided as economic projections showed renewable energy becoming cheaper than fossil fuels within the decade.

Dr. Okonkwo left Singapore cautiously hopeful. The agreement was imperfect—all agreements are. But it represented genuine progress, achieved through patience, evidence, and the gradual recognition that some problems cannot be solved by any nation acting alone.

Vocabulary words practiced: succession, convergence, denotes, rigor, acquiesced, oscillated, proxies, contrivance, catalysts, deterrents, abated, deferred to, intermingled with, ambivalent, opaque, meticulous, inconspicuous, extemporaneous