Words in Context

ID: 359902ae
The following text is adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1837 story “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment.” The main character, a physician, is experimenting with rehydrating a dried
flower.
At first [the rose] lay lightly on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, however, a singular change began to be visible. The crushed and
dried petals stirred and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber.
As used in the text, what does the phrase “a singular” most nearly mean?
A. A lonely
B. A disagreeable
C. An acceptable
D. An extraordinary
ID: 22a41819
Rejecting the premise that the literary magazine Ebony and Topaz (1927) should present a unified vision of Black American identity, editor Charles S. Johnson fostered his
contributors’ diverse perspectives by promoting their authorial autonomy. Johnson’s self-effacement diverged from the editorial stances of W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke,
whose decisions for their publications were more ______.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. proficient
B. dogmatic
C. ambiguous
D. unpretentious
ID: 5e57efec
Economist Marco Castillo and colleagues showed that nuisance costs—the time and effort people must spend to make donations—reduce charitable giving. Charities can
mitigate this effect by compensating donors for nuisance costs, but those costs, though variable, are largely ______ donation size, so charities that compensate donors will
likely favor attracting a few large donors over many small donors.
A. supplemental to
B. predictive of
C. independent of
D. subsumed in
ID: d4a8f7cb
Dance choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar aims to give people the opportunity to be ______ her creative process. For example, live performances of her dance HairStories,
which debuted in 2001, featured videos of people across the United States talking about their hair and audience members sharing pictures of their interesting hairstyles.
A. nervous about
B. completed by
C. delayed by
D. involved in
ID: 0f040c50
The following text is from Yann Martel’s 2001 novel Life of Pi. The narrator’s family owned a zoo when he was a child.
It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enough to require a train to explore it, though it seemed to get smaller as I grew older, train included.
©2001 by Yann Martel
As used in the text, what does the word “spread” most nearly mean?
A. Hidden
B. Discussed
C. Extended
D. Coated
ID: 9cdcd902
Charles “Teenie” Harris was a photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier from 1936 to 1975. During his career he took over 70,000 photographs documenting everyday life in
Pittsburgh’s Black communities. The Carnegie Museum of Art maintains thousands of his photographs, carefully ______ them so that audiences can continue to view them
well into the future.
A. replacing
B. inventing
C. preserving
D. counting
ID: e459076b
The following text is adapted from George Eliot’s 1871–72 novel Middlemarch.
[Mr. Brooke] had travelled in his younger years, and was held in this part of the country to have contracted a too rambling habit of mind. Mr. Brooke’s conclusions were as
difficult to predict as the weather.
As used in the text, what does the word “contracted” most nearly mean?
A. Restricted
B. Described
C. Developed
D. Settled
ID: ca47273b
Biologist Jane Edgeloe and colleagues have located what is believed to be the largest individual plant in the world in the Shark Bay area of Australia. The plant is a type of
seagrass called Posidonia australis, and it ______ approximately 200 square kilometers.
A. acknowledges
B. produces
C. spans
D. advances
ID: 5a278f24
The work of molecular biophysicist Enrique M. De La Cruz is known for ______ traditional boundaries between academic disciplines. The university laboratory that De La Cruz
runs includes engineers, biologists, chemists, and physicists, and the research the lab produces makes use of insights and techniques from all those fields.
A. epitomizing
B. transcending
C. anticipating
D. reinforcing
ID: a2835734
Visual artist Gabriela Alemán states that the bold colors of comics, pop art, and Latinx culture have always fascinated her. This passion for the rich history and colors of her
Latinx community translates into the ______ artworks she produces.
A. vivid
B. unknown
C. definite
D. reserved
ID: d2eb1df1
In recommending Bao Phi’s collection Sông I Sing, a librarian noted that pieces by the spoken-word poet don’t lose their ______ nature when printed: the language has the same
pleasant musical quality on the page as it does when performed by Phi.
A. scholarly
B. melodic
C. jarring
D. personal
ID: 637d0878
The Appalachian Trail is a hiking path in the eastern United States. Much of the 2,000 mile trail passes through wilderness areas. In order to ______ those areas, the United
States Congress passed the National Trails System Act in 1968, ensuring that the trail would not be sold or commercially developed.
A. borrow
B. postpone
C. protect
D. decorate
ID: 54804e10
While scholars believe many Mesoamerican cities influenced each other, direct evidence of such influence is difficult to ascertain. However, recent excavations in a sector of
Tikal (Guatemala) unearthed a citadel that shows ______ Teotihuacán (Mexico) architecture—including a near replica of a famed Teotihuacán temple—providing tangible
evidence of outside influence in portions of Tikal.
A. refinements of
B. precursors of
C. commonalities with
D. animosities toward
ID: 9aa44886
The following text is from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.
[Jay Gatsby] was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American—that comes, I suppose, with the
absence of lifting work in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. This quality was continually breaking through his punctilious
manner in the shape of restlessness.
As used in the text, what does the word “quality” most nearly mean?
A. Standard
B. Prestige
C. Characteristic
D. Accomplishment
ID: e8c26398
To develop a method for measuring snow depth with laser beams, NASA physicist Yongxiang Hu relied on ______; identifying broad similarities between two seemingly
different phenomena, Hu used information about how ants move inside colonies to calculate how the particles of light that make up laser beams travel through snow.
A. a collaboration
B. an accessory
C. a contradiction
D. an analogy
ID: b92c13fa
According to statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the best way to predict the amount of time a nonperishable entity (such as a building or a technology) will continue to exist is
to examine how long it has survived so far. In this view, an item’s age is the strongest ______ how much longer it will last.
A. uncertainty about
B. indicator of
C. motivation for
D. criticism of
ID: 849bf8d7
In the mid-nineteenth century, some abolitionist newspapers ______ westward migration in the United States; by printing a letter that described the easy fortunes and high
salaries miners could make in California during the Gold Rush, Frederick Douglass’s newspaper North Star was one such publication that inspired readers to relocate.
A. stimulated
B. assigned
C. opposed
D. disregarded
ID: 8b46bb51
A journalist and well-respected art critic of nineteenth-century Britain, Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake did not hesitate to publish reviews that went against popular opinion. One
of her most divisive works was an essay questioning the idea of photography as an emerging medium for fine art: in the essay, Eastlake ______ that the value of photographs
was informational rather than creative.
A. exposed
B. asserted
C. discovered
D. doubted
ID: c14daa3c
Close analysis of the painting Girl with a Flute, long attributed to the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, has revealed subtle deviations from the artist’s
signature techniques. These variations suggest that the work may be that of a student under Vermeer’s tutelage—potentially ______ our understanding of Vermeer as a solitary
artist.
A. negating
B. prefiguring
C. entrenching
D. substantiating
ID: d3ca5d59
Stephen Hannock’s luminous landscape paintings are appealing to viewers but have elicited little commentary from contemporary critics, a phenomenon that may be due to
the very fact that the paintings seem so ______. Many critics focus their attention on art that is cryptic or overtly challenging.
A. innovative
B. subversive
C. profound
D. accessible
ID: 9d73c9eb
Osage Nation citizen Randy Tinker-Smith produced and directed the ballet Wahzhazhe, which vividly chronicles Osage history and culture. Telling Osage stories through ballet
is ______ choice because two of the foremost ballet dancers of the twentieth century were Osage: sisters Maria and Marjorie Tallchief.
A. a suitable
B. a determined
C. an arbitrary
D. an unpredictable
ID: fce80a36
In 2008 a complete set of ancient pessoi (glass game pieces) was uncovered from beneath a paving stone in modern-day Israel. Due to their small size, pessoi were easily
misplaced, making a whole set a rare find. This has led some experts to suggest that the set may have been buried intentionally; however, without clear evidence,
archaeologists are left to ______ what happened.
A. speculate about
B. dismiss
C. expand on
D. catalog
ID: e4f312c5
While most animals are incapable of passing somatic mutations—genetic alterations that arise in an organism’s nonreproductive cells—on to their offspring, elkhorn coral
(Acropora palmata) presents an intriguing ______: in a 2022 study, researchers found that elkhorn coral produced offspring that inherited somatic mutations from a parent.
A. hypothesis
B. affinity
C. anomaly
D. corroboration
ID: 0d402146
US traffic signals didn’t always contain the familiar three lights (red, yellow, and green). Traffic lights only ______ red and green lights until the three-light traffic signal was
developed in the 1920s.
A. avoided
B. featured
C. appreciated
D. disregarded
ID: 62a18353
The following text is adapted from Zora Neale Hurston’s 1921 short story “John Redding Goes to Sea.” John wants to travel far beyond the village where he lives near his
mother, Matty.
[John] had on several occasions attempted to reconcile his mother to the notion, but found it a difficult task. Matty always took refuge in self-pity and tears. Her son’s
desires were incomprehensible to her, that was all.
As used in the text, what does the phrase “reconcile his mother to” most nearly mean?
A. Get his mother to accept
B. Get his mother to apologize for
C. Get his mother to match
D. Get his mother to reunite with

ID: aa7ae735
The following text is adapted from Mohsin Hamid’s 2017 novel Exit West. Saeed lives with his mother and father.
On cloudless nights after a daytime rain, Saeed’s father would sometimes bring out the telescope, and the family would sip green tea on their balcony, enjoying a breeze, and
take turns to look up at objects whose light, often, had been emitted before any of these three viewers had been born—light from other centuries, only now reaching Earth.
©2017 by Mohsin Hamid
As used in the text, what does the word “reaching” most nearly mean?
A. Arriving at
B. Consulting with
C. Running to
D. Clinging to
ID: a4f50d30
Scientists previously thought that all electric eels belong to a single species, but a team of researchers led by zoologist C. David de Santana proved this idea wrong by ______
that there are in fact three distinct species of electric eels.
A. pretending
B. complaining
C. requiring
D. demonstrating
ID: bce627d9
Mineralogical differences are detectable in samples collected from two locations on the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, but such differences may not indicate substantial
compositional variations in the asteroid. Cosmochemist Kazuhide Nagashima and colleagues note that at the small scale of the samples, the distribution of minerals is
unlikely to be ______.
A. neglected
B. redundant
C. ongoing
D. uniform
ID: d8d1ecaa
Business researcher Melanie Brucks and colleagues found that remote video conference meetings may be less conducive to brainstorming than in-person meetings are. The
researchers suspect that video meeting participants are focused on staring at the speaker on the screen and don’t allow their eyes or mind to wander as much, which may
ultimately ______ creativity.
A. recommend
B. criticize
C. impede
D. construct
ID: 3d658a5a
Some foraging models predict that the distance bees travel when foraging will decline as floral density increases, but biologists Shalene Jha and Claire Kremen showed that
bees’ behavior is inconsistent with this prediction if flowers in dense patches are ______: bees will forage beyond patches of low species richness to acquire multiple resource
types.
A. depleted
B. homogeneous
C. immature
D. dispersed
ID: 3f753a8e
Investigating whether shared false visual memories—specific but inaccurate and widely held recollections of images such as product logos—are caused by people’s previous
______ incorrect renditions of the images, researchers Deepasri Prasad and Wilma Bainbridge found that, in fact, such memories are often not explained by familiarity with
erroneous versions of the images.
A. compliance with
B. exposure to
C. criteria for
D. forfeiture of
ID: 82b7c3b2
The following text is from Booth Tarkington’s 1921 novel Alice Adams.
Mrs. Adams had always been fond of vases, she said, and every year her husband’s Christmas present to her was a vase of one sort or another—whatever the clerk
showed him, marked at about twelve or fourteen dollars.
As used in the text, what does the word “marked” most nearly mean?
A. Staged
B. Priced
C. Stained
D. Watched
ID: aad56f2b
As a young photographer in the 1950s, William Klein ______ the conventions of photography by creating images that were high contrast and included blurred and distorted
elements—features generally seen as flaws. So unorthodox was Klein’s work that he had difficulty finding a publisher for his now-iconic 1956 photo book Life is Good & Good
for You in New York.
A. reviewed
B. defied
C. respected
D. prevented
ID: e8fb0744
As an undergraduate researcher in anthropology, Jennifer C. Chen contributed to a groundbreaking study challenging the accepted view that among prehistoric peoples,
female participation in hunting was ______. The research team’s review of data from late Pleistocene and early Holocene burials in the Americas revealed that, in fact, as many
as half of the hunters in those populations were female.
A. inevitable
B. satisfactory
C. negligible
D. commonplace

Words in Context

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ID: 359902ae

A. Get his mother to accept

B. Get his mother to apologize for

C. Get his mother to match

D. Get his mother to reunite with

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