SAT Words in Context 1

In *Nature Poem* (2017), Kumeyaay poet Tommy Pico portrays his _____ the natural world by honoring the centrality of nature within his tribe’s traditional beliefs while simultaneously expressing his distaste for being in wilderness settings himself. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• responsiveness to

• ambivalence toward

• renunciation of

• mastery over

While scholars believe many Mesoamerican cities influenced each other, direct evidence of such influence is difficult to ascertain. However, recent excavations in a sector of Tikal (Guatemala) unearthed a citadel that shows _____ Teotihuacán (Mexico) architecture—including a near replica of a famed Teotihuacán temple—providing tangible evidence of outside influence in portions of Tikal. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• refinements of

• precursors of

• commonalities with

• animosities toward

To develop a method for measuring snow depth with laser beams, NASA physicist Yongxiang Hu relied on _____; identifying broad similarities between two seemingly different phenomena, Hu used information about how ants move inside colonies to calculate how the particles of light that make up laser beams travel through snow. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• a collaboration

• an accessory

• a contradiction

• an analogy

Whether the reign of a French monarch such as Hugh Capet or Henry I was historically consequential or relatively uneventful, its trajectory was shaped by questions of legitimacy and therefore cannot be understood without a corollary understanding of the factors that allowed the monarch to _____ his right to hold the throne. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• disengage

• annotate

• buttress

• reciprocate

A journalist and well-respected art critic of nineteenth-century Britain, Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake did not hesitate to publish reviews that went against popular opinion. One of her most divisive works was an essay questioning the idea of photography as an emerging medium for fine art. In the essay, Eastlake _____ that the value of photographs was informational rather than creative. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• exposed

• asserted

• discovered

• doubted

The work of Kiowa painter T.C. Cannon derives its power in part from the tension among his _____ influences: classic European portraiture, with its realistic treatment of faces; the American pop art movement, with its vivid colors; and flatstyle, the intertribal painting style that rejects the effect of depth typically achieved through shading and perspective. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• complementary

• unknown

• disparate

• interchangeable

New and interesting research conducted by Suleiman A. Al-Sweedan and Moath Alhaj is inspired by their observation that though there have been many studies of the effect of high altitude on blood chemistry, there is a _____ studies of the effect on blood chemistry of living in locations below sea level, such as the California towns of Salton City and Seeley. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• quarrel about

• paucity of

• profusion of

• verisimilitude in

Close analysis of the painting Girl with a Flute, long attributed to the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, has revealed subtle deviations from the artist’s signature techniques. These variations suggest that the work may be that of a student under Vermeer’s tutelage—potentially _____ our understanding of Vermeer as a solitary artist. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• negating

• prefiguring

• entrenching

• substantiating