SECTION 1
1. The name of the Sloane Matthew Library has long been ______ ; even longtime city residents assume it is a run-of-the-mill library, never suspecting what art treasures it contains.
A. reversed
B. proposed
C. misleading
D. elevated
E. intriguing
2. although economic growth has conventionally been viewed as the ______ for poverty in underdeveloped regions, this prescriptions’ negative environmental side effects a re becoming a concern.
A. culprit
B. recipe
C. panacea
D. explanation
E. refuge
3. even as the economy struggled, the secretary stood by his ______ long-term outlook, saying that technology was allowing business to make deep-rooted improvements in their productivity, the best indicator of an economy’s ability to grow
A. arcane
B. sanguine
C. equivocal
D. ambivalent
E. irresolute
4. The villas and compounds that proliferated during the building boom of the 1990s were (i)
______, far too(ii) ______ for people of average means.
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A. opulent D. bucolic
B. eclectic E. expensive
C. enigmatic F. mundane
5. The governor has considerable political talents, but as a speaker he is far less (i) ______ than his opponent, whose oratorical skills are (ii) ______.
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A. adroit D. unpretentious
B. unconvincing E. spurious
C. prolix F. breathtaking
6. there is no point in combing through the director’s work for hints of ideological significance. It is unnecessary: his ideology — Marxist, anti-imperialist, aligned with the perceived interests of the powerless and the marginal — is the (i) ______ of his films. The clarity and force of that ideology are considerable, but its (ii) ______ sometimes bothers critics, who often scold the director for lacking (iii)
______.
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A. hidden focus D. bluntness G. lucidity
B. chief impetus E. obscurity H subtlety
C murky lesson F. feebleness I courage
7. In a strong indication of the way the entire party is _______ the candidate with moderate credentials, the outspokenly conservative former mayor of a major city has promised to raise a substantial amount of money for the candidate’s campaign.
A rallying behind
B incensed over
C undecided about
D mortified over
E embarrassed about
F coalescing around
8. Mr. Hirsch says he will aim to preserve the foundation’s support of ________ thinkers, individuals who are going against the trends in a field or an acknowledged set of opinions.
A iconoclastic
B integrative
C doctrinaire
D heterodox
E dogmatic
F synthesizing
9. In France cultural subsidies are _________: producers of just about any film can get an advance from the government against box-office receipts, even though most such loans are never fully repaid. A ubiquitous
B invaluable
C sporadic
D scanty
E questionable
F omnipresent
10. The problem of avoiding duplicate names ----- such as for Internet domain names or for e-mail ----is particularly__________ when the name has to fit into a format that allows only a finite number of possibilities.
A meager
B acute
C agreeable
D severe
E beneficial
F productive
SECTION 2
1. In searching for norms in the sense of authoritative standards of what ought to be, rather than in the sense of what is average and thus can be considered normal, normative ethics aims to ________. A predict
B mitigate
C question
D dictate
E personalize
2. In his unexpurgated autobiography, Mark Twain commented freely on the flaws and foibles of his country, making some observations so___________that his heirs and editors feared they would damage
Twain’s reputation if not withheld.
A. buoyant
B. acerbic
C. premonitory
D. laudatory
E. temperate
3. That the artist chose to remain in his hometown does not mean that he remained (i) __________; on the contrary, he (ii) __________the international artistic movements of his day.
Blank (i) Blank (ii)
A provincial D knew nothing about
B capricious E made light of
C obstinate F kept abreast of
4. An innovation of the eighteenth-century cookbook writer Mary Cole was that in her work she (i) __________the earlier books from which her recipes were drawn, Even in those numerous instances in which she had collated into a single version, which she could have called her own, the recipes of several earlier writers, she (ii) __________them.
Blank (i) Blank (ii)
A. preserved D. took pains to
B. enhanced E. sought to imitate
C. acknowledged F. could not surpass
5. As the finances of the energy-trading firm began unraveling, what eventually became(i) ______ was that the company had been concocting the “value” out of thin air, thanks not to the trading strategies it promoted as visionary but to financial (ii)______ that turned a once-solid entity into the most notorious (iii) ________ in an era of corporate scandals.
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A. vindicated D. redemption G. omission
B. unmistakable E. responsibilities H boon
C unverifiable F. games I debacle
6. Kept (i) ______ by cloying commercial radio and clueless record executives, the American popular music scene has frequently depended on cities at the edges of the cultural map to provide a much- needed shot of (ii) ______. The momentary (iii) ______ what the next big thing is seems to come out of nowhere – as if someone blows a whistle only those in the know can hear, and suddenly record executives and journalists are crawling all over what had previous been an obscure locale.
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A. hidebound D. originality G. consensus about
B. liberated E. truth H indifference to
C obligated F. orthodoxy I guarantee of
7. Family photos of the author suggest that she was ______ child: she seemed to wear a permanent frown.
A. a sullen
B. an amiable
C. a surly
D. a beautiful
E. a prudent
F. a stunning
8. Biologists agree that snakes descended from lizards, but exactly where this first happened has been a matter of debate since the 1800s, when two ______ theories emerged.
A. complex
B. competing
C. dubious
D. conclusive
E. contending
F. irrefutable
9. A particular bacterium that has never encountered a particular virus will usually succumb to it, a
______ that may, surprisingly, be beneficial to the colony in which the bacteriuym lives.
A. susceptibility
B. theory
C. characteristic
D. juxtaposition
E. collision
F. hypothesis
10. The remarkable thing about the mayoral race, in retrospect, is that so many people wanted the job of managing a municipality so obviously about to ______.
A. materialize
B. disintegrate
C. crumble
D. prosper
E. flourish
F. scuffle
