Learn more about what candidates must study, and what exam tips and tricks to apply, to master this part of the ASVAB exam.
15 Questions
8 Minutes
35 Questions
11 Minutes
To succeed at the word knowledge test, applicants must expose themselves to as much vocabulary – both military and non-military vocabulary – in the weeks and months leading up to the ASVAB test.
Synonyms are words that approximately mean the same as one another. For example: good and nice are synonyms of one another, whereas good and bad are antonyms of one another. You will be asked questions with an underlined word and asked to find its synonym from a list of options. Typically, these questions are framed as, “Clandestine most nearly means:” In this case, you are asked to choose a word from a list of options that most resembles the meaning of the word, clandestine.
In contrast, contextual questions test your ability to understand the meaning of a word in each context. Typically, you will be presented with a sentence and one of the words in that sentence will be underlined. You will then be given 4 possible answers and one of those options accurately represents the meaning of the underlined word in that sentence. For example: “We were told that Rebecca was intransigent on the matter.”
As exam as it is one of the four subtests used
to calculate your AFQT score!