SAT Words in context HARD

The creation of Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed was ______ process. Over the course of three years, Reiniger and her collaborators painstakingly made more than 250,000 individual images of hand cut paper silhouettes and repeatedly had to invent entirely new methods and tools to create the special effects Reiniger envisioned.

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

• a haphazard

• a contentious

• an ineffectual

• an arduous

The güiro, a musical instrument traditionally made from a dried and hollowed gourd, is thought to have originated with the Taíno people of Puerto Rico. Players use a wooden stick to scrape along ridges cut into the side of the gourd, creating sounds that are highly ______: the sounds produced by güiros can differ based on the distance between the ridges, the types of strokes the player uses, and the thickness of the gourd.

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

• overlooked

• powerful

• routine

• variable

Proposals to raise the age at which retirees begin receiving government transfers of funds are generally discussed in terms of the effects on transfer recipients, but Andria Smythe has argued that delaying such transfers could ______ wealth creation among working adults by lengthening the period in which they are providing financial support to their nonworking parents.

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

• stymie

• compound

• disparage

• outstrip

In studying the use of external stimuli to reduce the itching sensation caused by an allergic histamine response, Louise Ward and colleagues found that while harmless applications of vibration or warming can provide a temporary distraction, such ______ stimuli actually offer less relief than a stimulus that seems less benign, like a mild electric shock.

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

• deceptive

• innocuous

• novel

• impractical

The following text is adapted from James Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room. The narrator is riding in a taxi down a street lined with food vendors and shoppers in Paris, France.

The multitude of Paris seems to be dressed in blue every day but Sunday, when, for the most part, they put on an unbelievably festive black. Here they were now, in blue, disputing, every inch, our passage, with their wagons, handtrucks, their bursting baskets carried at an angle steeply self-confident on the back. ©1956 by James Baldwin

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

• Arguing about

• Disapproving of

• Asserting possession of

• Providing resistance to

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

The following text is from the 1989 novel The Ancient Child by Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday. The main character has achieved tremendous commercial success as a painter.

More and more often he was asked to compromise his art or himself in one way or another, and more often than not he did so, for he was inclined to be passive and naïve; it was difficult for him to say no. Those who exhibited his work, who praised and purchased it, and who demanded its proliferation began to "determine" it. ©1989 by N. Scott Momaday

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

• Conclude

• Dictate

• Evaluate

• Select

While recent scholarship has undermined claims that the works of twelfth-century Islamic philosopher Ibn Rushd were ______ other Muslim philosophers of his time, it is indisputable that his location in the Muslim-ruled area of what is now Spain meant that his works were primarily available thousands of miles west of the era’s center of Islamic thought. 

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

• controversial among

• antagonistic toward

• imitated by

• inconsequential to

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

Critics have asserted that fine art and fashion rarely ______ in a world where artists create timeless works for exhibition and designers periodically produce new styles for the public to buy. Luiseño/Shoshone-Bannock beadwork artist and designer Jamie Okuma challenges this view: her work can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and purchased through her online boutique.

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

• prevail

• succumb

• diverge

• intersect