All Things Verbal

GRE Text Completion Quiz 5

1. Frederick the Great of Prussia was known for his (i) ______ under fire during his military victories; however, when confronting issues of domestic policy, this equilibrium sometimes failed him. He was often (ii) ______ with his ministers, who never knew when they might be subjected to one of his tirades.

intrepidity
cruelty
sangfroid
fascist
mercurial
vainglorious

2. During the mating season, mammals of many species may lie (i) ______ to their mates; yet, for the remainder of the year, some of those species lead utterly solitary and (ii) ______ existences.

paramount
apposed
enamored
inconsolable
irascible
eremitic

3. At the beginning of the 20th century, wealthy business leaders piteously (i) ______ that child labor laws would ruin them and corrupt the youth; one hundred years later, members of the modern (ii) ______ similarly bemoan that any government intervention will bankrupt them and contribute to the moral (iii) ______ of the less-moneyed classes.

besmirched
bleated
postulated
oligarchy
hierarchy
monarchy
rectitude
scruples
turpitude

4. The library wing was first conceived merely as (i) ______ to address the problem of book overstock until a more permanent solution could be found. Ironically, it was the flimsy nature of the wing itself that attracted such architectural interest and ultimately led to its canonization as a (ii) ______ of its kind. Now a statute exists to protect this originally transient structure in (iii) ______.

a stopgap
an ornament
a modicum
paragon
nadir
catalyst
consecration
chronology
perpetuity

5. Though the negotiation was initially expected to proceed smoothly, it soon became apparent that any appearance of (i) ______ between the parties was disingenuous or, at best, a superficial adherence to certain (ii) ______.

duplicity
amity
solace
mores
politics
plaudits

6. While some feel that the author’s (i) ______ late in his life (ii) ______ his reputation, others felt that his dissolution added a certain glamour to his biography and credibility to his libertinous tales.

vitiation
debauchment
deterioration
derogated from
bedizened
aggrandized

7. The children’s story—seemingly a simple tale of animals gathering for a picnic in the forest—took ______ turn at the end, admonishing readers to always be honest.

a generous
a cynical
a jocular
an irate
a didactic

8. The plan, if it can be called that, has been more of a (i) ______ vision than a concrete proposal; like many similarly (ii) ______ ideas, it is unlikely to ever come to fruition.

Dionysian
protean
martial
quixotic
pragmatic
unorthodox

9. It was a fact that the region was both quiet and rural, but what the typically impoverished residents considered (i) ______ refuge was considered by the well-heeled visitors to be an intolerable (ii) ______, and its residents’ lifestyles unpleasantly (iii) ______.

a parochial
an arcadian
a squalid
penumbra
utopia
hinterland
tony
spartan
apollonian

10. The biography, a (i) ______ account of a (ii) ______ life, was a gripping read, though hardly appropriate for young readers.

faux-naif
no-holds-barred
dyed-in-the-wool
callow
stonewalled
storied

11. The club had been all male up until 1963, when it began to admit women, who now make up more than 65 percent of the membership; hence, the female club president was both annoyed and amused at an elderly male member’s (i) ______ suggestion that women be shuffled off to (ii) ______ organization where they could play bridge and drink tea without having to worry about serious issues.

regressive
rustic
prudish
an incendiary
an auxiliary
a hierarchical

12. Although this historical figure had been (i) ______ politician and a brilliant inventor, the professor found himself unable to (ii) ______ the interest of his students in the career of a man with such anachronistic views.

a clandestine
a deft
an effete
whet
accrue
tout

13. Though the industry leader faces prosecution while the smaller company is legally shielded from consequences due to a crafty system of hiring outside firms to do its dirty work, the smaller firm is clearly (i) ______ with the larger one, (ii) ______ the larger firm’s plans to dominate the industry through illegal labor practices and offshore dumping.

at loggerheads
in cahoots
preoccupied
colluding
stymying
abetting

14. The organizer of the university’s series of public debates commented that it is difficult to find a suitable adjudicator for debates on certain controversial matters, as there exist topics in regards to which no one is ______.

pellucid
disinterested
solipsistic
jocular
subjective