2. The painter was just as famous for his personality as for his work; unlike the many pretentious and pontificating men in his field, he was known to be entirely _________.

3. The newest romantic comedy wasn’t exactly bad, but simply _________ ; it had laughs, but they were all jokes you’d heard before.

4. An obsession with aesthetics _________ all the work of the computer company; even their unsuccessful products manage to look like pieces of modernist sculpture.

5. Oftentimes, when administrators force teachers to cleave too closely to a federal curriculum, those teachers feel _________, because the mandatory curriculum curbs their sense of being creative and dynamic educators.

6. The Fed knows that a certain level of financial stability can be attained by lowering interest rates, yet if it overuses this power, it risks losing its most reliable means of _________ a crisis.

7. Even though Mariposa loved taking on roles that involved a lot of lines, she was excited to be playing a more _________ character, which would require her to focus more on gesture and expression.

8. Most physics textbooks are dense and abstruse, whereas Richard Feynman can describe the most recondite mysteries with impressive _________.

9. The beauty queen’s mother could not believe her daughter had been disqualified for hitting one of the judges with her baton, and she would not be _________ by the official’s offer of a free steak dinner.

10. Though Hamlet is famous for being _________, he still manages to go on something of a killing spree in Shakespeare’s play, proving that he is hardly paralyzed with depression.