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Nouns or Verbs?
Sometimes you need to know whether the stem words are nouns or verbs in order to determine their meaning and figure out how they are related. For example, suppose you have this question.
SPRING:RAIN::
(A) suitor:gifts
(B) pollen:bee
(C) farm:tractor
(D) automobile:traffic
(E) requirement:limitation
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Scan the Answer Choices
The stem words are puzzling. Is spring the action-verb meaning jump or bounce? Or is spring a thing, the noun that means the season? Or the noun that means the coiled piece of metal that you find in mattresses and watches? One way to find out is to look at the answer choices. Are the first words in the answer choices verbs or nouns?
SPRING:RAIN::
(A) suitor:gifts
(B) pollen:bee
(C) farm:tractor
(D) automobile:traffic
(E) requirement:limitation
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Spring Is a Noun
Farm can be either a verb or a noun, but the other first words are nouns. So from that you know that all the first words are nouns, including spring and farm. We don't know what the second words are yet. But now that you know the stem word spring is a noun — not the verb that means to jump — can you find the answer to this question?
SPRING:RAIN::
(A) suitor:gifts
(B) pollen:bee
(C) farm:tractor
(D) automobile:traffic
(E) requirement:limitation
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Try Different Meanings
Choice (A) is the right answer. Spring, the season, brings rain, in the same way that a suitor brings gifts.
Questions like that one can be tricky if a word has more than one meaning. If you try one meaning and have no luck, then try another meaning and see if that one works. But once you know a word is, say, a noun, try only different noun meanings, not meanings of verbs or adjectives.
In SAT analogy questions, the appropriate answer pair of words must have the same relationship as the stem words, the order of the words does not matter.
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