Sentence Completion Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Correct answer: atrophied

Damaged nerves mean the muscles cannot be used, and through disuse names the cause directly. Muscles that are not used waste away, which is what atrophy means.

Invigorated is the opposite of what disuse produces. Elongated and contracted describe changes in length rather than in bulk or strength, and neither is a consequence of not using a muscle.

Answer: A

Correct answer: pellucid

Formerly signals that the water used to be the opposite of what pollution has made it. Since the fish are no longer visible from the surface, the water must once have been clear.

Pellucid means transparently clear. Muddy and stagnant describe the polluted state, not the earlier one, and tranquil refers to stillness, which has no bearing on whether fish can be seen.

Answer: D

Correct answer: choleric

The sentence is a balanced contrast: Palmer is given two qualities, Frazer two, and they must oppose each other. Boastful already opposes courteous, so the blank must oppose reserved.

Choleric - hot-tempered, quick to anger - is the opposite of reserved. Constrained, phlegmatic and tractable all suggest restraint, which would make the two artists alike and destroy the contrast the sentence announces.

Answer: A

Correct answer: situation - incongruous

Positioned haphazardly is the clue for both blanks. If placement was haphazard, then what the architects ignored was placement itself - the cathedral’s situation - and the surroundings it ended up in would not suit it.

Incongruous supplies that mismatch, while salubrious, convenient and apt all describe surroundings that suit, which is the opposite of haphazard. Ambience and durability are not what haphazard positioning affects.

Answer: B

Correct answer: misanthrope

The semicolon defines the word for you: he hated the rest of mankind. A misanthrope is exactly that - someone who hates humanity.

A philanthropist loves humanity and is the direct opposite; a hypochondriac is preoccupied with his own health; a hedonist pursues pleasure. None of the three has anything to do with hatred of other people.

Answer: A

Correct answer: implications - veracity

The last clause settles the second blank: the student was nothing if not reliable, so Symes had no reason to doubt the truthfulness of the results. Veracity is that word, and impudence and folly are not qualities one would doubt in results at all.

Although then requires the first blank to be troubling. What alarms him is what the results might mean - their implications. Errors would fit the alarm but contradict the second half, since errors are precisely a reason to doubt the results.