QUESTION:
The travel writer’s ______________ towards others he met on his cross-country trip most likely endeared him only to those readers with a misanthropic bent.
Select the answer.
A) diffidence
B) humility
C) cynicism
D) garrulity
E) obsequiousness
Answer: C) cynicism
Explanation: The keywords are “endeared…misanthropic bent.” Misanthropic readers are those who have a general ill-will towards humanity. Therefore, the travel writer must be expressing some negative attitude. (C), “cynicism,” means interpreting others behavior as solely motivated by self-interest. A misanthropic person is prone to looking cynically upon the actions of others. (A) “diffidence”, which means modesty or shyness resulting from a lack of self-confidence, does not fit the context. (B) “humility” would not endear the writer to misanthropes. (D) “garrulity” means talkativeness. (E) “obsequiousness” means excessively fawning.
QUESTION:
Unlike the performances of her youth, in which she seamlessly inhabited a role, the performances of her later years were ____________, as though she were calling out to audiences, “look how convincingly I can portray my character.”
Select the answer.
A) decrepit
B) comical
C) volatile
D) mechanical
E) contrived
Answer: E) contrived
Explanation: The contrast is between “seamlessly inhabited” and the blank. The quotation further underscores the point that the actress’s performances were not at all natural. In this sense (E), “contrived,” works best.
QUESTION
With characteristic ____________, H.L. Mencken skewered the sacred cows of his time, criticizing social trends and government institutions with equal asperity.
Select the answer.
A) hauteur
B) playfulness
C) vitriol
D) civility
E) dash
Answer: C) vitriol
Explanation: The answer is C, vitriol, and the clue here is criticizing. Sure, it helps to know what sacred cows (they are cherished beliefs) and asperity (bitterness) are, but you should still be able to come up with your own word based on criticizing. My word is criticizing-ness. I know – it is not an actual word. But, that’s the whole point – you only have to get the meaning of the blank – and the meaning of criticizing-ness is clear.
Now, let’s go through the answer choices. Hauteur may be unfamiliar to you, but you should notice it comes from the word “haughty”, which means arrogant (this is a very common GRE word, and is, in fact, used to define more difficult GRE words, such as supercilious). Arrogance isn’t quite criticizing-ness.
Next we have (B), but playfulness clearly doesn’t work. Then, we have (C) vitriol, the most difficult word of the bunch, and the GRE knows this. In fact, they are offering answer choices that kind of fit the clue, like hauteur, but not really. (D) civility is not one of these words, but (E) dash is. If you do something with dash, you do it with flair. Couldn’t you criticize something with flair? Sure. The only problem is, there is no clue – that is word or phrase – that supports dash.
Of course, knowing asperity helps. Asperity, meaning bitterness, matches up perfectly with vitriol, which means bitter criticism.
Even had you not known this, successfully eliminating three of the five answers gives you a 50-50 chance of guessing correctly. Plugging in the answer choices into the blanks, on the other hand, does not increase your odds.
QUESTION
An element of _________ on the part of the audience is interwoven into the multi-era saga, for two actors portraying the same character at different phases of life are distinguishable enough that the audience is able to discern differences for which the mere passing of years cannot account.
Select the answer.
A) surprise
B) foreboding
C) disbelief
D) confusion
E) predictability
Answer: C) disbelief
Explanation: The key to unraveling this tough question is to break up the sentence into digestible parts, simplifying along the way: “An element of _______ on the part of the audience…saga” = The is an inherent quality of the multi-era saga “Two actors…difference” = the audience can tell how two actors playing the same character differ physically “passing years…account” = these differences are greater than those that naturally happen when a person ages. Therefore, an inherent part of watching the multi-era saga is an element of disbelief, since the audience knows that the same character is actually played by two different people.
