The ACT people, and especially the SAT people, like to dangle in front of the kids a strange-seeming word that many of them actually could deal with, but only if they recognize that it is just a variant of a word they are familiar with. A decent percentage of kids will be familiar with tenacious, but if a test question refers to tenacity, many will feel lost. Ten-a-city, what on earth is that? We teach the kids to be alert to the possibility of variants, and to experiment with forms and pronunciation to see whether they can find a related word they already know.
