Quiz 7 · Vocabulary in Context — The Talking Hands Series

First, the idea

The test's favorite way to ask about words is as used in sentence 4, ___ most nearly means — and the word is almost never a rare one. It's usually a common word — charge, settle, general — used in one particular sense of the several it owns. The skill isn't knowing rare words. It's reading which sense the sentence is using.

A glove tells you the shape of the hand it was made for; you can read the hand without ever seeing it. An unfamiliar word sits in a sentence the same way: the words around it hold its shape. Read the shape, make your guess, then try the fit — slide your guess into the sentence where the word stood. If it fits at every finger, keep it. If it bunches or hangs loose, guess again.

The shape comes in a few readable kinds:

Restatement. The sentence defines the word on the spot, often after a dash or that is. Overtime this month is voluntary — that is, no one has to take it.

Example. Such as, for instance, including — the examples share the trait that defines the word. The site bans combustibles such as paint thinner, propane, and oily rags.

Contrast. Unlike, but, however — the word stands opposite something named. Unlike his brother, who talks the whole shift, Omar is taciturn.

The sentence's own logic. No signal word at all; what happens around the word narrows it. The crew jury-rigged a handle from tape and a broken broom, and it held until the real part came.

Word parts, as a second witness. Prefixes and roots can back a guess up — re-, un-, port — but on this test the sentence outranks the dictionary in your head. (Word histories get a whole page of their own, off the map: Quiz 56.)

And the trap to name: the first-meaning trap — answering with the meaning you knew before you read the sentence. General summons an officer; strike summons a match or a bat. The test counts on that reflex. The glove is the cure: the first meaning to arrive still has to fit the sentence it's entering, and usually it bunches.

One more part of the shape is grammar: what job the word is doing in its sentence. In The union voted to strike, the word strike follows to, so it is a verb, an action. The match and the bat are things, and they are ruled out before you weigh a single meaning. Ask what job the word has, and half the wrong meanings leave on their own.

Worked example — thinking out loud

Take one sentence from a bakery schedule: Marisol runs the front counter on Saturdays. The first meaning arrives on its own: runs means moves fast on foot. Try that fit: Marisol moves fast on foot the front counter — the glove bunches; a counter is not a place you run to, and nobody runs a counter with their feet. So read the shape instead: a person, a counter, one day of the week, every week. Someone is in charge of that counter on that day. Try is in charge of: Marisol is in charge of the front counter on Saturdays. It sits snug at every finger. Keep it.

And notice the first meaning wasn't useless. Runs carries motion and effort inside it, and the person who runs a counter keeps it moving. The first meaning often points in the right direction. It just doesn't get to answer.

Part A · The skill by itself

Three short fits first, on fresh ground — the reading world is wide.

1. Unlike her sister, who spends every dollar the day it arrives, Amara is frugal. Frugal most nearly means —

careless with money careful with money unlucky with money generous with money

2. The super called the pipe repair imperative — it could not wait another day. Imperative most nearly means —

impossible expensive necessary and urgent optional

3. The pantry accepts perishables such as milk, eggs, and fresh greens. Perishables most nearly means —

foods that spoil quickly canned goods donations of money kitchen equipment

Part B · The skill in the wild

A true passage, standing two years before the fire you read about in Quiz 5. The questions ask what five ordinary words are doing inside it.

THE UPRISING OF THE TWENTY THOUSAND — 1909

1In the fall of 1909, New York's shirtwaist factories ran on the labor of thousands of young women, most of them immigrants still learning English. 2Their complaints were old ones: long hours, docked pay, locked doors, and foremen who charged the workers for their own needles and thread. 3On the night of November 22, workers filled a hall at Cooper Union to decide what to do next. 4Speaker after speaker urged patience.

5Then a young garment worker named Clara Lemlich asked for the floor and, speaking in Yiddish, moved that the shirtwaist makers call a general strike. 6The hall rose to its feet and took the pledge. 7Within days close to twenty thousand workers had walked out, and the papers named it the Uprising of the Twenty Thousand. 8The Women's Trade Union League backed the strikers, raising bail money and walking the picket lines beside them. 9Winter made the picketing bitter, and the arrests came by the hundreds. 10Still the strike held.

11Shop by shop, the owners began to settle, signing agreements for shorter hours, better pay, and an end to the petty charges. 12By February most of the industry had come to terms. 13Among the holdouts was the Triangle Waist Company, whose owners refused the union to the end. 14The strikers went back with less than everything they had asked for, and to an industry that was no longer quite the one they had left.

4. As used in sentence 2, charged most nearly means —

rushed at accused billed filled with energy

5. As used in sentence 5, moved most nearly means —

changed location formally proposed touched with emotion hurried

6. As used in sentence 5, general most nearly means —

involving the whole industry led by a military commander vague usual

7. As used in sentence 8, backed most nearly means —

reversed direction stood directly behind bet money on supported

8. As used in sentence 11, settle most nearly means —

sink to the bottom calm down reach an agreement move to new land

The key — and why the tempting answers tempt

Part A

1. B. The unlike sets Amara against a sister who spends it all; frugal has to sit on the careful side. D tempts by warmth — generous people are easy to like — but the clue is contrast, and the contrast is with spending, not with kindness.

2. C. The dash restates the word: could not wait another day is the definition, delivered on the spot. B tempts because repairs usually are expensive — true in life, absent from the sentence. That's knowledge from your wallet, not from the page.

3. A. Such as hands you three examples, and what milk, eggs, and fresh greens share is that they spoil. B is the flat contradiction — canned goods are the one thing on a shelf that refuses to perish.

Part B — the Uprising of the Twenty Thousand

4. C. The shape: foremen, needles and thread, workers paying for their own tools. The fit that sits snug is billed — and sentence 11's petty charges confirms it on the way out. B is the courtroom sense and A the cavalry sense — real jobs the word holds, neither one hired by this sentence.

5. B. Grammar is part of the glove: moved that the makers call a strike is a motion made in a meeting — a formal proposal. C is the trap with feelings. The hall was moved, and that's exactly why it tempts — but the question asks about sentence 5's word, and that word takes a that-clause. Emotion doesn't.

6. A. A strike called for every shop in the trade: general here means industry-wide. B is the first-meaning trap in uniform — no officer is in the hall. The word's most famous sense arrived before the sentence did.

7. D. Raising bail and walking the lines is support in action, and supported covers both. B is the near-miss: standing behind someone on a picket line comes close enough to touch the answer — but the League's backing was money and presence, and the sentence says so.

8. C. Owners signing agreements: settle means come to terms, and sentence 12 restates it. D is the covered-wagon sense — the first-meaning trap heading west. Nobody in sentence 11 is homesteading.