A strategy you should avoid  when answering a "vocabulary in context" question is to plug each answer choice into the sentence in order to determine which is correct.

A strategy for "vocabulary in context" questions is to determine from the context whether the word is positive or negative, then eliminate answer choices.

"The tactics and aims of traffic management are modest but powerful.
Most intersections rely on a combination of pre-set timing and computer adaptation."
As used in the sentence, the word "modest" most nearly means...

"The tactics and aims of traffic management are modest but powerful.
Most intersections rely on a combination of pre-set timing and computer adaptation."
Which word in the sentence is key to understanding that modest is being used in opposition to the word powerful?

"I cannot tell you how much joy has filled my heart as I have sat here listening to these papers and noting those characteristics that made each ....beautiful and masterful.  I would in no ways lessen the importance of these expressions by your various representatives, but I want to say that the words that specially voiced what I may call the up-gush of my souls were to be found in the paper read by Mrs. Swalm on 'the Newspaper as a Factor of Civilization.'"
Voiced most nearly means...

"I started a paper and ran it for two years at a vast cost to every one concerned in it.  I served seven years at lecturing to pay off the debt and interest on that paper and I considered myself fortunate to get off as easily as that."
Concerned most nearly means

"I have never been a pen artist and I have never succeeded with rhetorical flourishes unless it were by accident.  But I have always admired supremely that which I could realize the least.  The woman who can coin words and ideas to suit me best would not be unlike Mrs. Swalm, and when I heard her I said: 'That is worthy of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.'"
"coin" most nearly means...

"The next journal I contributed to was the Una.  These two journals were the only avenues women had through which to face themselves in type to any extent worth of note before the war."
Avenues most nearly means...

"It is not to be denied that we live in the midst of strong agitations, and are surrounded by very considerable dangers to our institutions and government."
When trying to define "agitations" - which word/phrase indicates that the correct definition must be negative?

"It is not to be denied that we live in the midst of strong agitations, and are surrounded by very considerable dangers to our institutions and government."
Agitations most nearly means...

Read Yogi Berra passage.
The passage indicates that focusing on one's actions as they are performed...

Math poses difficulties. There's little room for eyewitness testimony, seasoned judgement, a skeptical eye or transcendental rhetoric.
Seasoned most nearly means...

Around the middle of the 20th century, science dispensed with the fantasy that we could easily colonize the other planets in our solar system.  Science fiction writers absorbed the new reality:  soon, moon and asteroid settings replaced Mars and Venus.
Dispensed with most nearly means...

Until the past few years, physicists agreed that the entire universe is generated from a few mathematical truths and principles of symmetry, perhaps throwing in a handful of parameters like the mass of an electron.  It seemed that we were closing in on a vision of our universe in which everything could be calculated, predicted, and understood.  However, two theories, eternal inflation and string theory, now suggest that the same fundamental principles from which the laws of nature derive may lead to many different self-consistent universes, with many different properties.
Parameters most nearly means...

Until the past few years, physicists agreed that the entire universe is generated from a few mathematical truths and principles of symmetry, perhaps throwing in a handful of parameters like the mass of an electron.  It seemed that we were closing in on a vision of our universe in which everything could be calculated, predicted, and understood.  However, two theories, eternal inflation and string theory, now suggest that the same fundamental principles from which the laws of nature derive may lead to many different self-consistent universes, with many different properties.
closing in on most nearly means