Contextual Clues

My brother said, “I just freed myself from a very loquacious history professor. All he seemed to want was an audience.”

• pretentious

• grouchy

• talkative

• worried

There is no doubt that the idea of living in such a benign climate was appealing. The islanders seemed to keep their vitality and live longer than Europeans.

• tropical

• not malignant

• kind

• favorable

It is difficult to imagine a surfeit of talent in one individual, yet Leonard Bernstein simply does not have the time to make complete use of his talent as conductor, performer, writer, and lecturer.

• excess

• variety

• superiority

• lack

There is a large demand all over the United States for plants indigenous to the desert. Many people in Arizona have made a good business of growing and selling cacti and other local plants.

• native

• necessary

• foreign

• alien

After the Romans left, a millennium and a half passed before people again lived in such comfort. Churchill wrote, “From the year 400 until the year 1900 no one had central heating and very few had hot baths.”

• a decade

• many years

• 1000 years

• a century

Many years before, Caesar’s men had tried and failed to invade Britain. No doubt this contributed to the xenophobia of the Romans. They were cautious about strangers who entered their country.

• honesty

• fear of foreigners

• kindliness

• stubbornness

Such are the vicissitudes of history. Nothing remains the same. Three hundred years of peace ended in darkness and confusion.

• evils

• mistakes

• changes

• rules

The purpose of the psychiatrist is to mitigate the suffering of the patient.

• make milder

• beautify

• increase

• banish

We knew he couldn’t hold out much longer, because he had been doomed from the beginning. One night he met his ineluctable fate.

• forgotten

• inevitable

• hidden

• unhappy

A combination of fog and industrial smoke, called smog, has vitiated the air in and around many big cities.

• concentrate

• fill up

• replace

• contaminate