HESI A2 Vocabulary Study Guide

Synonyms

Words with the same or nearly the same meaning. On the A2 the choices are usually close, so the right answer is the one that also fits the register and the context, not just the dictionary definition.

Put each choice back into the original sentence. The one that still reads naturally is the answer.

Antonyms

Words with opposite meanings. Watch for choices that are merely different rather than opposite, and for words with more than one opposite depending on sense.

Decide which sense of the word the question is using before you look for its opposite.

Homophones

Words that sound alike and are spelled differently: their and there, principal and principle, affect and effect, patience and patients. Confusing them is the single most common written error in healthcare notes, which is why the A2 tests them.

A principal is a person or a main thing; a principle is a rule. The "pal" is the person.

Homonyms

Words spelled and pronounced the same but carrying different meanings, such as "bear" or "patient". Context is the only way to tell which is meant, so these questions are really reading questions in disguise.

Identify the part of speech first. A homonym used as a noun rarely means the same thing as the same word used as a verb.

Word association

Recognising which words belong together in a field or a relationship: a symptom with a condition, a tool with a procedure. Health vocabulary features heavily, which rewards steady exposure more than memorising a list.

Name the relationship out loud before you pick. "Part to whole" and "cause to effect" are the two most common.

Affixes

Prefixes and suffixes carry consistent meaning, so they let you decode words you have never seen. This is the highest-value topic in the subject for the time it takes: brady is slow, tachy is fast, hyper is above, hypo is below, itis is inflammation, ectomy is removal.

Learn twenty medical affixes and you will decode far more than twenty words on the day.

Idioms

Phrases whose meaning is not the sum of their words. They appear in reading passages as much as in vocabulary items, and the literal reading is always offered as a distractor.

If a phrase reads oddly when taken literally, it is an idiom. Answer for the figurative meaning.

Multiple meaning words

Common words that mean different things in a clinical context: culture, positive, acute, chronic, discharge. A positive test result is not good news, and the exam tests exactly that gap.

When a word has an everyday meaning and a clinical one, the clinical sense is usually what is being tested.

Best choices for blanks in a sentence

Sentence-completion items where several choices are grammatically fine and only one is right. The deciding factor is usually precision or tone rather than grammar.

Read the full sentence with your choice in place. If it is merely acceptable rather than exact, keep looking.