Vicarious: meaning and SAT practice
Vicarious (adjective) means: Experienced or felt through someone else rather than directly.
Vicarious in a sentence
She got a vicarious thrill watching her friend compete in the championship game.
Similar: indirect, secondhand, surrogate, delegated. Opposite: direct, firsthand.
SAT-style practice: what does “vicarious” most nearly mean?
She got a vicarious thrill watching her friend compete in the championship game.
As used in the sentence, “vicarious” most nearly means
- blatant
- showy
- opposite
- indirect
Show the answer
Answer: D. “vicarious” means: Experienced or felt through someone else rather than directly. “indirect” is the closest match in this sentence. The other choices are real SAT-level words, but none of them carries that meaning here.
On the digital SAT this is the “Words in Context” skill, about 7 of the 54 Reading and Writing questions. The test asks what a word means as used in the passage, so a word’s most common meaning is not always the answer. More of these, with full explanations, are on SAT Words in Context practice questions.
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