Find the Meaning by using 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

Answer explanation

Loquacious = tending to talk a great deal; talkative

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

• favourable

Answer explanation

Benign – gentle and kindly; not harmful to the environment.

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

Answer explanation

Surfeit – an excessive amount of something

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.

• necessary

• foreign

• alien

• native

Answer explanation

originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native.

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.

• fear of darkness

• fear of foreigners

• fear of pain

• The fear of open or crowded spaces

Answer explanation

Agoraphobia – The fear of open or crowded spaces

Achluophobia - The fear of darkness

Algophobia - The fear of pain

Xenophobia - The fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign

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

• evils

• mistakes

• changes

• rules

Answer explanation

Vicissitudes - a change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant.

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

• make milder

• beautify

• increase

• banish

Answer explanation

Mitigate – make (something bad) less severe, serious, or painful.

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

Answer explanation

Ineluctable – unable to be resisted or avoided; inescapable.

A combination of fog and industrial smoke, called smog, has vitiated the air in and

around many big cities.

• concentrated

• filled up

• replaced

• contaminated

Answer explanation

Vitiated - spoil or impair the quality or efficiency of.