Sentence Completion Set 1

Architects define a physical structure as a set of materials arranged in such a way that these materials can ------- the downward pull of gravity.

• mimic

• resist

• amplify

• dislodge

• demonstrate

Just when the senator's opponent had ------- the lead in popularity polls, public opinion -------; as a result, the incumbent senator regained her front-runner position.

• taken . . stabilized

• challenged . . waned

• captured . . shifted

• conceded . . vacillated

• relinquished . . changed

Any biographer of this playwright, who assumed an elaborate public facade in order to conceal private concerns, must examine the impulse behind such -------.

• artifice

• joviality

• conceit

• disbelief

• erudition

It is said that as a legal team Charles Houston and Thurgood Marshall complemented each other thoroughly: Houston's sedate manner was ------- Marshall's -------.

• analagous to . . trepidation

• commensurate with . . formality

• tempered by . . jocularity

• adverse to . . gregariousness

• superseded by . . inquisitiveness

Conflicting standards for allowable radiation levels in foods made ------- appraisals of the damage to crops following the reactor meltdown extremely difficult.

• reliable

• private

• intrusive

• conscious

• inflated

The student's feelings about presenting the commencement address were -------; although visibly happy to have been chosen, he was nonetheless ------- about speaking in public.

• positive . . insecure

• euphoric . . hopeful

• unknown . . modest

• ambivalent . . anxious

• restrained . . confident

Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar, far from being a tight, ------- narrative, is instead ------- novel that roams freely and imaginatively over a half-million years.

• traditional . . a chronological

• provocative . . an insensitive

• forceful . . a concise

• focused . . an expansive

• circuitous . . a discursive

In a society that abhors -------, the nonconformist is persistently -------.

• creativity . . glorified

• rebelliousness . . suppressed

• insurgency . . heeded

• smugness . . persecuted

• stagnation . . denigrated

The board members, accustomed to the luxury of being chauffeured to corporate meetings in company limousines, were predictably ------- when they learned that this service had been -------.

• satisfied . . annulled

• stymied . . extended

• displeased . . upheld

• disgruntled . . suspended

• concerned . . provided

Both by ------- and by gender, American painter Mary Cassatt was an -------, because her artistic peers were Frenchmen.

• background . . amateur

• citizenship . . intellectual

• nationality . . anomaly

• style . . advocate

• skill . . expert