Week 7-Core 2 & 3

Klein's team found that a family history of early-onset cancer did not seem to alter the risk of people in families with sporadic cancer, but it was important when it came to familial pancreatic cancer.

Source: Reuters

In this sentence, sporadic means:

• impossible to deny or disprove

• involving inferences from general principles

• recurring in scattered or unpredictable instances

• characterized by an unhealthy and compulsive preoccupation

Unsurprisingly, much criticism focused on the specifics of his Geography, some details of which—especially at the margins of the known world—were necessarily speculative.

Source: Circumference

In this sentence, speculative means:

• performing or capable of performing

• set down in permanent form

• acutely insightful and wise

• not based on fact or investigation

Which of the following would you most likely abhor?

• a comrade

• an enemy

• an infant

• a role model

ambiguous means :

• unclear

• broken

• unbent

• closed

Every word was uttered with an evident intention to be disagreeable, but no ________ was provoked from the person addressed.

Source: Quicksands

harvestjetalert

• abhor

• retort

• fortitude

• demeanor

“I’m moving as fast as possible to rectify a situation in which I was basically sabotaged,” he said, declining to elaborate.

Source: New York Times

In this sentence, rectify means to:

• describe in detail

• set straight or right

• make widely known

• dismiss from the mind

While Mr. Sidelsky respected their abilities, he abhorred their politics.

Source: Long Walk to Freedom

In this sentence, abhorred means:

• compared

• evaded

• enjoyed

• hated

Highly skilled surgeons, like Dr. Ashutosh K. Tewari at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, say it takes about 200 to 300 robot-assisted operations to become highly ________.

Source: New York Times

• vagrant

• belated

• obtrusive

• proficient

Gone are the days when a social security bill arriving out of the blue could knock a struggling enterprise into oblivion.

Source: BBC

In this sentence, oblivion means:

• the state of being polluted or contaminated

• the state of being disregarded or forgotten

• the act of turning to others for assistance

• the allocating of aid on the basis of need

But even amid the market slide, some traders were nonchalant about the harm that Mr. Obama's proposals might inflict to major banks.

Source: Wall Street Journal

In this sentence, nonchalant means:

• not modified or restricted by reservations

• marked by casual unconcern or indifference

• impossible to remedy or correct or redress

• of or pertaining to atmospheric phenomena