CHAPTER 5 / SENTENCE COMPLETION SKILLS 233
SAT Practice 6: The Toughest Sentences
- The country’s confidence, formerly sustained by
an ------ sense of power, was replaced by an
equally exaggerated sense of ------ following the
hasty evacuation of its troops from three foreign
capitals.
(A) inflated.. weakness
(B) overwhelming.. inviolability
(C) erratic.. hysteria
(D) unquestioned.. omnipotence
(E) arbitrary.. resolution - According to their detractors, the leaders of the
Union for Progressive Politics do not truly ------
change, but simply rehash old and discredited
theories of political philosophy.
(A) admonish
(B) censor
(C) advocate
(D) caricature
(E) hinder - Dr. Cuthbert often ------ his former associates for
not continuing to support him; apparently he
harbored great animosity because of their ------ of
him.
(A) disparaged.. endorsement
(B) excoriated.. abandonment
(C) exonerated.. denunciation
(D) extolled.. betrayal
(E) venerated.. dismissal - Despite her gregariousness, Andrea seems to
have been a woman who cherished her ------
highly.
(A) colleagues
(B) friendships
(C) privacy
(D) integrity
(E) humility - It is extremely rare to see a politician ------ any
opinion that is widely unpopular; it seems that,
for them, public censure is more ------ even than
death.
(A) conform to.. desirable
(B) tolerate.. exciting
(C) reject.. feared
(D) espouse.. painful
(E) manipulate.. natural - The cogency and animation he showed in private
belied his reputation for a notably ------ style of
lecturing.
(A) tepid
(B) incisive
(C) versatile
(D) infrequent
(E) fluent - The haiku, with its ------, its reduction of natural
and everyday events to their mere essence, seems
to economically depict the ------ of even the sim-
plest human experience.
(A) casualness.. destructiveness
(B) optimism.. barrenness
(C) capriciousness.. rigidity
(D) digressiveness.. precariousness
(E) conciseness.. poignancy - Sadly, most people who say they want change in
public schools will struggle to resist it, or at least
------ its effects on them.
(A) initiate
(B) distort
(C) palliate
(D) defend
(E) enhance - Despite the ------ literature debunking the theory of
ESP, a critical and rational awareness of the sub-
ject continues to ------ most of the public.
(A) vivid.. pervade
(B) voluminous.. elude
(C) provocative.. captivate
(D) ambiguous.. perplex
(E) incomprehensible.. escape