Hummingbirds use spider silk to strengthen

nest walls to better _______ the weight and

pressure of wriggling hatchlings.

A map purporting to show that Vikings charted

North America long before Columbus, ____ as

a fraud in 1974, could turn out to be ____ after

all, according to California scientists.

Although the poet Stevie Smith had a childhood

that was far from ____, she always

envied children, believing they alone had the

ideal life.

A prudent, thrifty New Englander, DeWitt was

naturally ____ of investing money in junk

bonds, which he looked on as ____ ventures.

In Christopher’s _____ family, _____ begun

over dinner frequently carried over for days.

The Cabinet member’s resignation was not a

total ____: rumors of his imminent departure

had been making the rounds in Washington for

a week.

It is possible to analyze a literary work to

death, ____ what should be a living experience

as if it were a laboratory specimen.

The wagon train leaders chose to ____ their

route when they realized that the heavy rains

had made fording the river too ____ a task.

Anthropologists traditionally argue that the

male-female division of labor in hunter-gatherer

societies arose because it ____ the nuclear

family’s joint interests and thereby represented

a sound, ____ strategy.

Because of its strength, adhesiveness, and

invaluable qualities as a nest-building material,

many species of birds ____ silk into their nests.

The recruit was ____ by the sergeant’s scathing

rebuke; nobody had ever ____ him like that

before.

Her memoirs are quite unlike those of her predecessors,

for she is bold and aggressive where

they are ____ and comfortable.

The report was relentlessly ____ to the scientist,

interpreting one complex event after

another to his ____.

People who don’t outgrow their colleges often

don’t grow in other ways; there remained in

Forster’s life and imagination a ____ of the

undergraduate, clever but ____.