1. In Europe, football, otherwise known as soccer, is the most popular sport by several orders of magnitude, whereas in America, fandom is fairly evenly ______ among a few different sports.
2. The astrophysicist argues that our books and films about interstellar space travel are a form of mass ______, and that only a miracle on a scale heretofore unseen could allow a human being to voyage to even the closest star in another solar system.
3. Peculiarly enough, Shakespeare has been often (i) ______ as the best English language playwright, and often (ii) ______ as a man lacking the education to write those plays.
4. Although it was not the university’s policy to (i) ______ the authority of its faculty, the president felt that the professor’s comments regarding affirmative action could not remain (ii) ______.
5. In order to defend downloading music illegally, it’s necessary to engage in a bit of ethical (i) ______. While it is true that traditional record labels (ii) ______ their artists—demanding indefensibly large percentages of their profits—downloading a song illegally is equally (iii) ______.
6. The fact that the average life expectancy ten thousand years ago was so much shorter than it is now is often (i) ______ as evidence supporting the notion that the world always improves with time. However, if you (ii) ______ for the fact that most children in that epoch died in childbirth, it turns out that life expectancy back then was nearly the same as it is now. On a (iii) ______ note...
7. On an aptitude test in 1986, an argument posited that the possibility of conducting banking transactions from home was as likely as flying cars, an argument that today sounds ______.
8. Napoleon is of course most famous for his military triumphs, but his innovative code of law had a subtler but more ______ impact...
9. Many ______ people feared for the life of Ronald Reagan because since 1840, every president elected in a year ending in zero had died in office.
10. Known for her humorous but acerbic wit, the fashion doyenne commented, in her usual, simultaneously (i) ______ and (ii) ______ manner...
11. Every generation is accused of slacking by the preceding ones, before in turn calling their own progeny lackadaisical; such is the ______ of life.
12. Although retired, the professor takes pains to remain ______ the latest developments in her field.
13. She was not the only (i) ______ of the long-proposed legislation, but she was the (ii) ______ who finally got the bill onto the legislative agenda.
14. Jeremy was not one to (i) ______ his success, so his family was shocked when they finally discovered that their (ii) ______ son was a Rhodes Scholar.