The September 2026 SAT Vocab Survey + Quiz - INT 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 September 2026 SAT — pulling from both the US and International administrations. I've put these into a quiz format so students and parents can challenge themselves. Good luck!

SAT Vocabulary September 2026 International - Round 1 - Warm-up Reading Passage

Instructions: Read this passage carefully before taking your quiz. All 19 vocabulary words from September 2026 International SAT Round 1 appear in context. Pay attention to how each word is used naturally in the story.

The Attribution

When the painting arrived at the auction house, it came with a story and very little else. The seller claimed it was an early work by a Dutch master; the paperwork was rudimentary, a single typed page listing two prior owners and no dates. Lena Vos, the senior appraiser, had ample experience with hopeful sellers. She also had a high tolerance for ambiguity, which the job required. What she would not tolerate was a fraudulent provenance.

The canvas itself was enigmatic. The brushwork in the sky matched the master's known technique, but the figures in the foreground were stiff, as if painted by a different hand. Two explanations were possible: a studio assistant had finished the work, or a later forger had added the figures to a genuine unfinished sky. The former would make the painting valuable; the latter would make it nearly worthless.

Lena was ambivalent about taking it on. The house's reputation depended on its being impartial, and she knew the seller's family socially. She raised the concern with the director, who left the decision to her discretion. She took the job, and she took notes.

She began by asking the lab to enumerate every pigment in the foreground. The results were abundant, sixteen distinct compounds, and one of them settled nothing: a blue that had been available both in the master's lifetime and for two centuries after. So she turned to the seller's documents. The chain of ownership was byzantine, passing through a bankruptcy, two estate sales, and a customs dispute that had apparently never been resolved. Her assistant lamented that half the relevant archives had been water-damaged in the 1950s.

The seller's lawyer wrote twice to say that his client would contest any attribution short of the master's own hand. Lena noted his guardedness; he never once answered a direct question about how the family had acquired the piece. Meanwhile a dealer in Antwerp wrote to say that the family had, years earlier, offered to sell him a painting matching this description before abruptly choosing to rescind the offer.

Lena's approach was pragmatic. She could not prove who had painted the figures, but she could prove when. A tiny sample from the foreground, taken with the seller's reluctant permission, showed a canvas preparation layer that did not exist until the 1840s. That finding obviated any further debate about the studio. The sky was old. The figures were not.

The seller withdrew the painting. Lena's resolve to publish the finding anyway, in the house's annual bulletin, cost her a friendship and, briefly, a client. It also brought in three new consignors the following year, each of whom said the same thing: they wanted an appraiser who would tell them what they did not want to hear.

Vocabulary words practiced: rudimentary, ample, tolerance for, fraudulent, enigmatic, the former/the latter, ambivalent, impartial, discretion, enumerate, abundant, byzantine, lament, contest, guardedness, rescind, pragmatic, obviate, resolve