Cambridge Vocabulary for IELTS Advanced - Core Terminology

Vocabulary practice flashcards focusing on academic and technical terms introduced across the units of Cambridge Vocabulary for IELTS Advanced.

Personality

The way an individual behaves, feels, and thinks, especially in social contexts.

Character

A combination of qualities and traits that make a person different from other people.

Characteristic

A feature or quality that is typical or noticeable about a person or thing; can function as a noun or an adjective.

Phytochemicals

Chemical compounds that occur naturally in plants, increasingly studied for their medicinal and therapeutic properties.

Functional foods ('phoods')

Everyday foods formulated with added medically beneficial ingredients, representing the intersection of food and pharmaceuticals.

Variable priority training

A learning strategy where individuals periodically shift priorities to improve skills in one area while maximising overall performance, encouraging multitasking.

Nucleus accumbens

A structure within the brain's reward centre associated with the pleasure derived from achieving a specific goal.

Institutional advertising

Advertising designed to build corporate reputation and public trust without directly soliciting sales.

Swarm intelligence

A collective, self-organising system where simple individuals following basic rules and local interactions solve complex group problems without centralised leadership.

Brazil nut effect

The physical phenomenon observed when granular mixtures of different sizes and densities are shaken, causing the largest particles to rise to the top.

Progressive obsolescence

A commercial and consumer pattern, traced to the 1920s, in which goods and garments are treated as disposable and rapidly replaced by newer models or fashions.

Megacity

A large metropolitan area with a total population exceeding 10 million people.

Smelting

The industrial process of extracting metal from its ore by heating the material to extremely high temperatures.

Malleable

Describing a substance or metal that is easily shaped, worked, or flattened into sheets without breaking.

Welfare state

A system of taxation and governance in which the state assumes primary responsibility for the social and economic well-being of its citizens through financial benefits and public services.

Deliberate practice

A structured, demanding form of training that involves considerable, specific, and sustained effort aimed at refining existing skills and expanding capability.

General Service List (GSL)

A foundational vocabulary list of over 2,000 high-frequency headwords published in 1953 by Michael West, covering roughly 80% of typical written English texts.

Metope

A plain, rectangular architectural element that fills the space between two decorated triglyphs on a classical Doric frieze.

Paparazzi

Independent photographers who relentlessly follow celebrities and public figures to capture candid images for the press.

Pygmy shrew

A small mammal with an exceptionally fast metabolism, the highest recorded mammalian heartbeat (1,200 beats per minute), and a brief lifespan of 11 to 13 months, requiring food every 15 to 30 minutes to survive.