2.1 Vocabulary in Context

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.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• uncertainty about

• motivation for

• indicator of

• criticism of

The Iguazu Falls, which lie on the border between Argentina and Brazil, are a popular and ______ tourist destination. The waterfalls have been visited by people from all over the world for over a century, and they are often cited as one of the most impressive natural wonders on Earth.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• fleeting

• revered

• obscure

• precarious

Dance choreographer Willa Jo 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.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• involved in

• nervous about

• delayed by

• completed by

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.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• requiring

• demonstrating

• complaining

• pretending

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.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• inventing

• counting

• replacing

• preserving

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.

As used in the text, what does the word “spread” most nearly mean?

• compressed
• concentrated
• Extended

• limited

In the award-winning puzzle game Monument Valley, players navigate the silent princess Ida through a series of puzzles and optical illusions. The game is known for its ______ art design: beautiful, fantastical architecture and calming pastel colors that make the game both challenging and pretty to look at.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• violent

• intricate

• mundane

• distracting

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.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• affinity

• corroboration

• hypothesis

• anomaly