Academic Word List (AWL)

to give something up completely, or to leave a place or person for good

Stronger than 'stop' or 'leave': to abandon something is to give it up for good, so the word implies a decision that will not be reversed. In research writing you abandon a hypothesis, a line of enquiry, a policy or a trial, and participants who leave a study are usually said to withdraw or drop out rather than to abandon it. The noun 'abandonment' is largely legal and clinical.

In academic prose you meet it in the passive far more often than the active: X was accompanied by Y is the standard way of reporting two things that occurred together without claiming that one caused the other. That neutrality is the point, so do not reach for it when you mean 'caused'. Spelling trap: two c's, one m, and the third person form drops the y for accompanies.

to gather or increase gradually over a period of time

Works both with and without an object: evidence accumulates on its own, while a firm accumulates capital. The word carries the idea of gradual build-up, so it sits badly with 'suddenly'. Very common in the perfect ('evidence has accumulated since'), and the noun accumulation is a technical term in economics and in geology.

open to more than one interpretation, and therefore unclear

Constantly confused with 'ambivalent'. A thing is ambiguous when it can be read in more than one way; a person is ambivalent when they hold two feelings at once. Texts, wordings, findings and instructions are ambiguous; people are not. The noun is ambiguity, the negative 'unambiguous' is common in method sections, and 'disambiguate' means to remove the second reading.

to add something at the end of a text, document or list

Means to add at the end, never in the middle, so 'append a clause to the contract' works and 'append a correction to page two' does not. Most students meet the family through the noun appendix, whose plural in academic use is appendices (appendixes is the anatomical plural). In computing it is the standard verb for adding to the end of a file or a list.

to rise in value over time, or to understand the full significance of something

Three senses, and the academic one is the least familiar to learners: to rise in value, the opposite of depreciate, used of currencies, assets and property. The second is to understand the force of something, common in formal hedging ('it must be appreciated that the sample was small'). The third, to be grateful, belongs to letters and email, not to argument.

decided by personal preference rather than by any stated rule or reason

Almost always a criticism: an arbitrary choice is one made without a stated reason, so a reader cannot check it. Do not treat it as a synonym of 'random', which is also on this list and has a technical meaning about known probabilities. A threshold picked by a chance procedure is random but not arbitrary; a threshold picked because it looked tidy is arbitrary but not random.

to make a task or process run by machine or software instead of by people

You will read the participle and the noun far more often than the base verb: automated data collection, automated scoring, the automation of routine work. Keep 'automated' apart from 'automatic': automated means a machine was made to do a job people used to do, while automatic describes something that happens by itself, including reflexes and unconscious processing.

a systematic influence that pushes a result consistently away from the truth

In research design this is a precise term, not a synonym for prejudice: a systematic error that pushes an estimate away from the truth in one direction. Random error is the opposite kind, because it cancels out as the sample grows while bias does not. Learn the named types (selection, recall, publication, measurement) and note the single s in biased.

a diagram presenting information as bars, lines or shapes; also to trace how something changes

A chart displays data as bars, lines or slices, and the common types are worth knowing by name: bar chart, pie chart, flow chart, organisation chart. In a paper, numbered display items are usually called figures and tables, so a chart appears as 'Figure 3'. The verb means to record or trace change over time, which is the sense used in history and economics writing.

to make something easier to understand by removing confusion about it

It presupposes existing confusion, so you clarify something already said, and you do not clarify a topic from scratch. Two patterns dominate: clarify plus a noun (clarify the role of X) and clarify plus a wh-clause (clarify whether, how, why). 'Further research is needed to clarify' is a stock closing move. The noun is clarification, usually countable in the sense of a request.

a raw material or basic product bought and sold in bulk on world markets

In economics it is a raw material or primary product traded in bulk and treated as interchangeable between suppliers: oil, wheat, copper, coffee. Hence commodity prices, commodity markets, commodity exporters. A looser sense means anything valued and scarce ('time is a scarce commodity'), and critical theory adds commodification, the turning of something non-market into a good for sale.

to add what is missing so that two things work well together

Spelled with an e in the middle, where 'compliment' with an i means praise. The two are not interchangeable in any context, though they do share an ancestor in Latin complere, to fill up, which is why neither spelling looks wrong. The same trap runs through the adjectives: complementary methods work together, while a complimentary ticket is free. Two things complement each other when each supplies what the other lacks. Grammar uses the noun for the phrase that completes a verb, and set theory for everything outside a set.

to behave or be made in the way a rule, standard or expectation requires

Takes 'to' in ordinary academic use (conform to a standard, to expectations, to a distribution); 'conform with' survives mainly in legal and regulatory prose. Note the two nouns: conformity is the social phenomenon studied in psychology, while conformance is the narrower engineering sense of meeting a specification. No preposition at all is an error here.

belonging to the present day, or belonging to the same period as the thing under discussion

Two senses that can flatly contradict each other. Modern: contemporary art is art of today. Of the same period as the thing discussed: a contemporary account of the 1789 revolution was written in 1789, not now. Because both readings are live, anchor it ('contemporary with the fire', 'present-day debates'). As a noun it names someone alive at the same time as another person.

to state or show the opposite of what has been claimed, so that both cannot hold

Stronger than 'differ from' or 'question': if B contradicts A, both cannot be true. Reserve it for that, and use 'is inconsistent with' when the clash is partial. Findings, evidence and accounts contradict one another, and a writer can contradict himself. The noun contradiction is countable, and 'contradictory' describes evidence that points both ways.

so important that everything else depends on it

A strong claim, not a booster: something is crucial when the outcome turns on it, so 'very crucial' is redundant and 'crucial' sprinkled through a discussion section weakens rather than strengthens it. Patterns: crucial to, crucial for, crucial in determining, and it is crucial that plus a subjunctive. 'Crucially' is common as a sentence adverb marking the decisive point.

the money in use in a particular country, or the extent to which an idea is widely accepted

The money sense is countable and takes a national modifier: a foreign currency, four currencies, currency markets. The second sense is uncountable and abstract, the state of being accepted and in circulation as an idea, and appears almost only in the phrase 'gain currency'. Reading 'the term gained currency in the 1970s' as being about money is a standard misunderstanding.

to stand for or be an explicit sign of something

The pair to learn is denote and connote. To denote is to stand for something explicitly, which is why mathematics and logic use it in the fixed formula 'let n denote the sample size'. To connote is to suggest something in addition to the literal meaning, so 'thrifty' and 'stingy' denote the same habit but connote opposite judgements. Keys and legends on figures denote too.

to notice or discover something hidden or hard to observe

Implies that the thing was hard to notice, so it is not a formal substitute for 'find'. Statistical power is defined as the ability to detect an effect if one is really there, which makes 'the study was underpowered to detect' a standard limitation sentence. The family splits by use: detection for the process, detectable for the threshold, detective for the police.

Always takes 'from'. Tone splits by object: departing from a mean or an expected value is neutral and quantitative, while departing from a protocol or a plan is a mild criticism. The noun most students meet is deviation, above all in 'standard deviation'. Avoid 'deviant', which is a loaded sociological label for people rather than a neutral word for values.

to force someone or something out of its usual position, or to take its place

Two senses meet in the humanities and the sciences. Forced movement of people gives displaced persons and internal displacement, terms with legal definitions in refugee law. Substitution gives 'one technology displaces another', which claims replacement rather than mere coexistence. Physics keeps a third, the volume of water a body pushes aside, and psychoanalysis a fourth.

plays as a literary form or field of study, or a single such work

In academic use it names plays as a genre and the discipline that studies them, so it is uncountable in 'Jacobean drama' and countable in 'two of her dramas'. The everyday sense of an exciting incident is informal and does not belong in an essay. Watch 'dramatic', which in academic prose usually just means large ('a dramatic increase') and is a booster worth rationing.

coming at the end of a process, after everything else has happened

A false friend for speakers of Romance languages. It means final, the one arrived at after a process; Spanish eventual and French éventuel mean possible or contingent, and German eventuell means perhaps, so the cognate says almost the opposite. 'Eventually' likewise means in the end, never possibly. If you mean 'possible', write possible; if you mean 'in the end', this is the word.

to display a quality, feature or form of behaviour clearly

The academic sense is to display a quality or behaviour: patients exhibit symptoms, samples exhibit a pattern, materials exhibit resistance. It is a formal alternative to 'show' and takes an abstract object, so a graph does not exhibit, it shows. The museum sense gives a noun, and British English calls the whole show an exhibition where American English often says an exhibit. Law adds a third: an exhibit is a piece of evidence.

to make full use of something, or to treat someone unfairly for your own gain

The tone flips with the object. Exploiting a resource, a gap in the literature or a property of the data is neutral and even admiring; exploiting workers or a vulnerability is condemnation. The noun exploitation leans negative in almost every field except resource economics. Stress moves too: the verb is exPLOIT, while the noun EXploit means a daring feat.

to rise and fall irregularly around an average level

Not a general word for change: it means to rise and fall irregularly around a level, so a steady climb does not fluctuate. It has no object, which rules out 'the policy fluctuated prices'. Compare 'vary', which is broader, and 'oscillate', which implies regularity. The noun fluctuation is usually plural, and 'fluctuating' hedges a claim about a variable that will not sit still.

an official recommendation about how something should be done, weaker than a rule

Nearly always plural in practice: clinical guidelines, guidelines for authors, national guidelines. It is deliberately weaker than a rule or a regulation, so guidelines are followed, issued, updated or departed from rather than broken. Keep it apart from 'guidance', which is uncountable and names the advice in general. One word, never two.

to draw attention to something so that it stands out

The workhorse verb of abstracts and conclusions: this study highlights the need for, the review highlights three gaps. Because it is so heavily used, vary it with 'draws attention to', 'points to' or 'underlines'. Note it reports emphasis, not proof, so a finding that highlights something has not established it. The noun means the best part of an event, and the physical marking sense is everyday.

suggested or understood without being stated directly

The pair of 'explicit', which is in sublist 6: explicit is stated outright, implicit is left to be inferred. The usual pattern is implicit in ('the assumption implicit in the model'), and the adverb implicitly is common in criticism. A second, older sense means complete and unquestioning, as in implicit trust. Related: imply, implication, and in psychology implicit memory and implicit bias.

to cause something to happen, or to reason from particular cases towards a general rule

Two academic lives. Causally it means to bring about, giving drug-induced, stress-induced and induced demand. In logic it names the reasoning that goes from particular observations to a general rule, the reverse of 'deduce' in sublist 3, which moves from a general rule to a particular case. Induction is therefore probabilistic where deduction is certain. A third sense, to persuade, takes an infinitive.

certain to happen and impossible to prevent

A very strong claim: not merely likely but impossible to prevent, so do not use it as a synonym for probable. Historians argue about whether an event was inevitable, and that debate is precisely about whether things could have gone otherwise. 'Inevitably' works as a sentence adverb, and the fixed phrase 'the inevitable consequence of' introduces a causal claim you must support.

the basic physical and organisational systems a country or organisation needs in order to function

Uncountable in ordinary use, so prefer 'investment in infrastructure' to a plural. It covers the basic physical systems a society runs on (transport, water, power) and by extension the organisational ones: research infrastructure, digital infrastructure, data infrastructure. You build, upgrade, maintain and invest in it. A plural appears only in specialist comparison of whole systems.

to look at something closely and deliberately in order to judge its condition or correctness

Closer and more official than 'look at': it implies a purpose and often an authority behind it, which is why inspection and inspector are institutional words in British education and public health. Data analysis borrows the neutral sense, as in 'inspect the residuals before interpreting the model', where it means examine deliberately rather than glance at.

very strong or extreme in degree

The pair to keep straight is intense and intensive. Intense describes degree, a quality felt strongly: intense pain, intense competition, intense heat. Intensive describes concentration of effort or resources in a short time or small space: intensive care, an intensive course, labour-intensive production. A phrase like 'intensive pain' is a standard learner error. The noun of degree is intensity.

to control or alter something skilfully, either as a deliberate experimental step or dishonestly

Neutral in experimental design and negative almost everywhere else. In an experiment the researcher manipulates the independent variable, meaning varies it deliberately in order to observe the effect, and 'experimental manipulation' is a technical term with no suggestion of dishonesty. Outside that frame, manipulating people or figures is an accusation, so 'manipulate the data' is best avoided when you mean process it.

to reduce something to the smallest possible amount, or to make it seem less important than it is

Given here in the British spelling (American: minimize), though Oxford house style uses the z form in British English too, so the real rule is to pick one and hold it through a whole document. Two senses: reduce as far as possible (minimise bias, risk, error, waste) and play down (the report minimised the scale of the leak). The opposite of the first is maximise.

relating to the centre of an atom or of a cell, or to the energy and weapons derived from atoms

Three fields, one word. Physics and policy give nuclear power, fission, waste and non-proliferation. Cell biology gives the nuclear membrane and nuclear DNA, from nucleus, whose plural is nuclei. Sociology gives the nuclear family, parents and children only, contrasted with extended kin. Pronounce it new-clee-er; the widespread new-cue-ler is a well-known error.

to balance the effect of one thing with an equal and opposite effect

The verb does not change form: offset, offset, offset, so 'offsetted' is always wrong. It means to balance one effect with an opposite one, and the pattern is offset X against Y or X is offset by Y. Accounting offsets losses against profits, and climate policy has given the noun a new life in carbon offsetting. The noun is always OFFset, and the verb is commonly offSET, though first-syllable stress is heard for it too.

The unit of argument in academic writing, not merely of layout: one idea per unit, announced by a topic sentence and closed before the next begins. Markers comment on it constantly, which is why it earns a place here. Citation styles use the abbreviation para. for sources with no page numbers, as in (Smith, 2019, para. 4). The verb is rare.

with the addition of; also used to state a margin either side of a value

It earns its place on an academic list through the quantitative register rather than through argument: the plus sign, x plus y, and above all 'plus or minus', the standard way of stating a margin of error or a tolerance. As a noun it means an advantage. What does not belong in a paper is the informal conjunction that opens a sentence, as in 'Plus, the sample was small'.

someone who works in a profession, especially medicine or law, rather than researching it

Names the person who does the work rather than studies it, which is why the researcher and practitioner divide is a standing theme in education, nursing and social work. British medicine gives the general practitioner, abbreviated GP, the family doctor. Note the spelling: British English writes the noun practice and the verb practise, but this word keeps a t before the ending.

most common, most noticeable or most powerful among several

Means most common or most powerful among several, never the only one, so a predominant view leaves room for dissenting ones. The adverb predominantly is far more frequent in research writing and works as a hedge: a predominantly female sample is mostly but not entirely female. The verb predominate exists and takes no object. Do not confuse it with 'dominant', which is stronger and often technical in genetics.

the likelihood that something will happen, or, in the plural, chances of future success

Singular and abstract, it means the likelihood of something happening, usually with 'of' plus a noun or gerund: little prospect of agreement. Plural, it means someone's chances of future success: job prospects, career prospects. Keep it away from 'perspective', which is a point of view, and note that 'prospective' is a design term, a prospective study following people forward in time.

going to the root of something and therefore far-reaching, or politically extreme

Neutral when it means going to the root, as in a radical rethink or a radical departure from earlier policy, and loaded when it labels politics. Readers cannot always tell which you intend, so pair it with a noun that settles the matter. Chemistry keeps a technical noun, the free radical, an unstable molecule with an unpaired electron; mathematics uses it for the root sign and Chinese writing for a character component.

governed by chance, so that every possible outcome has a known probability of occurring

A technical word, not a loose one. A selection is random when every unit has a known, non-zero chance of being chosen, which is a property of the procedure and not of how the result looks. So it is not a synonym for 'arbitrary', also on this list: arbitrary means chosen for no stated reason. Random error shrinks as the sample grows, whereas bias does not. The informal sense of odd or unexpected belongs to speech.

to make something stronger, or to make a behaviour more likely by rewarding it

Two senses worth separating. Generally it means to strengthen something that already exists: reinforce an argument, a claim, a stereotype, or physically reinforced concrete. In behavioural psychology it is technical, meaning to make a behaviour more likely by what follows it, giving positive reinforcement and reinforcer. One word, no hyphen, and it does not mean force something again.

to bring something back to the condition it was in before

Means to bring back to a previous condition, so it needs a prior state to return to: restore confidence, order, a building, a habitat, a file. The pattern restore X to Y makes that explicit. Compare 'repair', which fixes damage without any claim about the original state, and 'renovate', which modernises. The noun restoration also names historical periods and a school of ecology.

to change or correct something after reconsidering it; in British use, also to study for an examination

Everywhere it means to change something after reconsidering it: a revised manuscript, revised estimates, revise a figure upwards, and the journal verdict 'revise and resubmit'. British English adds a second sense unknown to American readers, to study for an examination, which Americans call reviewing. The noun revision carries both, so context has to disambiguate it.

a plan setting out when things will happen, or a formal list attached to a document

Pronounced shed-yool in British English and sked-jool in American, which surprises listeners both ways. The everyday phrases are on schedule, ahead of schedule and behind schedule. Research adds a sense learners rarely expect: an interview schedule is the list of questions an interviewer works through, not a timetable. Legal drafting adds another, a schedule attached to an act or contract.

Two unrelated words share the spelling. The grammatical noun is the one that matters for writing: academic English uses the present for established knowledge, the past for what a particular study did, and the present perfect for a body of work over time. The adjective means strained or unable to relax, and it is that word, not the grammatical one, that gives the noun tension.

to bring something to an end formally or by decision

Formal and usually institutional: contracts, employment, trials and pregnancies are terminated, and the word implies a decision by someone with the power to make it, which plain 'end' does not. It also works without an object for routes and lines. The noun is termination. Do not read 'terminal' as its adjective; that means final or fatal, or names a building.

a recurring idea running through a text, or a pattern of meaning identified across a data set

In literary study it is a recurring idea running through a work. In qualitative research it is a technical term with a stricter meaning: a pattern of meaning identified across a data set, produced by thematic analysis and supported by coded extracts, so a theme is not simply a topic that came up. Collocates: a central theme, a recurring theme, themes emerged from the data.

by that means, as a result of the action just mentioned

A formal connector meaning by that means, attaching a consequence to what was just said. Its grammar is the thing to learn: it is nearly always followed by an -ing form, as in 'thereby reducing costs', and it does not introduce a full clause of its own. Keep it apart from 'therefore', which introduces a conclusion, and from therein and thereof, which point back to a document.

the same at every point, in every case or at all times

As an adjective it means the same at every point or in every case, which is a strong empirical claim: a uniform distribution in statistics gives every value equal probability. Compare 'universal', which means applying everywhere, and 'consistent', which means free of contradiction. The adverb uniformly and the noun uniformity carry the same sense; the clothing noun is unrelated in use.

a machine for transporting people or goods, or a means of achieving or expressing something

The literal sense gives motor vehicles and vehicle emissions, but academic writing leans on the metaphor: a vehicle for something is a means of carrying it, as in a vehicle for reform or for social mobility. The preposition is for, not of. Pharmacology keeps a technical sense, the inactive substance that carries an active drug, and literary criticism uses it for the image side of a metaphor.

by way of a particular place, or by means of a particular method or channel

Two senses, and the second is the academic workhorse. By way of a place is the travel sense. By means of a method or channel is what method sections use constantly: recruited via social media, delivered via a web questionnaire, funded via a grant. It is Latin but fully naturalised, so no italics. It is a preposition on its own, so 'via of' is an error.

existing in effect though not formally or physically, or simulated by a computer

The computing sense is the familiar one: reality, machines and learning environments that are simulated rather than physical. The older sense is the trap, meaning in effect though not in name, as in a virtual monopoly. The adverb belongs almost entirely to that older sense, so 'virtually all participants' means nearly all of them and has nothing to do with computers.

relating to sight, or to presenting information in pictures rather than in words

Covers two things academic writing keeps apart. Relating to sight: the visual cortex, visual attention, visual field. Relating to graphical presentation: a visual representation of the results, and the noun plural 'the visuals' for the figures themselves. The verb visualise is ambiguous between forming a mental image and plotting data, so say which you mean.

found or occurring over a large area or among a great many people

One word, no hyphen, and it is about extent rather than frequency: a widespread practice is found in many places or among many people, which is not the same as one that happens often. It works before a noun and after the verb alike. Collocates heavily with use, adoption, support, criticism, damage and belief. The comparative is 'more widespread', never a one-word form.