The narratives that vanquished peoples have created of their defeat have, according to Schivelbusch, fallen into several identifiable types. In one of these, the vanquished manage to (i) .......... the victor’s triumph as the result of some spurious advantage, the victors being truly inferior where it counts. Often the winners (ii) ......... this interpretation, worrying about the cultural or moral costs of their triumph and so giving some credence to the losers’ story.
Blank (i)
(A) construe
(B) anoint
(C) collude in
Blank (ii)
(D) take issue with
(E) acknowledge
(F) disregard
The narratives that vanquished peoples have created of their defeat have, according to Schivelbusch, fallen into several identifiable types. In one of these, the vanquished manage to (i) .......... the victor’s triumph as the result of some spurious advantage, the victors being truly inferior where it counts. Often the winners (ii) ......... this interpretation, worrying about the cultural or moral costs of their triumph and so giving some credence to the losers’ story.
Blank (i)
(A) construe
(B) anoint
(C) collude in
Blank (ii)
(D) take issue with
(E) acknowledge
(F) disregard
Show Hint
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Step 1: Analyze Blank (i).
The losers interpret the victors’ triumph as based on some false advantage. The word “construe” (interpret) fits. “Anoint” (bless) does not fit, and “collude in” makes no sense here.
Step 2: Analyze Blank (ii).
The winners “worry about cultural or moral costs,” so they give some credence to the losers’ interpretation. This means they “acknowledge” it. “Take issue with” (oppose) and “disregard” (ignore) are the opposite of what is described.
Step 3: Conclusion.
The best completion is: construe … acknowledge.
I’ve long anticipated this retrospective of the artist’s work, hoping that it would make (i) .......... judgments about him possible, but greater familiarity with his paintings highlights their inherent (ii) .............. and actually makes one’s assessment (iii) ...............
Blank (i)
(A) modish
(B) settled
(C) detached
Blank (ii)
(D) gloom
(E) ambiguity
(F) delicacy
I’ve long anticipated this retrospective of the artist’s work, hoping that it would make (i) .......... judgments about him possible, but greater familiarity with his paintings highlights their inherent (ii) .............. and actually makes one’s assessment (iii) ...............
Blank (i)
(A) modish
(B) settled
(C) detached
Blank (ii)
(D) gloom
(E) ambiguity
(F) delicacy
Show Hint
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Step 1: Blank (i).
The author hoped the retrospective would lead to firm, final judgments. “Settled” fits. “Modish” (fashionable) and “detached” do not.
Step 2: Blank (ii).
Instead, the paintings show “ambiguity.” “Gloom” and “delicacy” do not match.
Step 3: Blank (iii).
Because of the ambiguity, one’s assessment remains “equivocal” (uncertain). Thus “similarly equivocal” is correct.
Stories are a haunted genre; hardly (i) .............. kind of story, the ghost story is almost the paradigm of the form, and (ii) .............. was undoubtedly one effect that Poe had in mind when he wrote about how stories work.
Stories are a haunted genre; hardly (i) .............. kind of story, the ghost story is almost the paradigm of the form, and (ii) .............. was undoubtedly one effect that Poe had in mind when he wrote about how stories work.
Show Hint
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Step 1: Blank (i).
The ghost story is “almost the paradigm of the form.” That means it is far from being debased (corrupt or low). So “a debased” fits because the author is rejecting that idea.
Step 2: Blank (ii).
What effect did Poe aim for? Clearly the sensation of fear or chills—“goosebumps.”
Step 3: Conclusion.
The correct pair is: a debased … goosebumps.
Given how (i) .............. the shortcomings of the standard economic model are in its portrayal of human behavior, the failure of many economists to respond to them is astonishing. They continue to fill the journals with yet more proofs of yet more (ii) .............. theorems. Others, by contrast, accept the criticisms as a challenge, seeking to expand the basic model to embrace a wider range of things people do.
Blank (i)
(A) overlooked
(B) occasional
(C) patent
Blank (ii)
(D) comprehensive
(E) improbable
(F) pervasive
Given how (i) .............. the shortcomings of the standard economic model are in its portrayal of human behavior, the failure of many economists to respond to them is astonishing. They continue to fill the journals with yet more proofs of yet more (ii) .............. theorems. Others, by contrast, accept the criticisms as a challenge, seeking to expand the basic model to embrace a wider range of things people do.
Blank (i)
(A) overlooked
(B) occasional
(C) patent
Blank (ii)
(D) comprehensive
(E) improbable
(F) pervasive
Show Hint
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Step 1: Blank (i).
The shortcomings are “astonishing” to ignore. This suggests they are obvious. “Patent” (obvious) is correct. “Overlooked” and “occasional” do not fit.
Step 2: Blank (ii).
The economists continue to prove unrealistic theorems. “Improbable” fits. “Comprehensive” and “pervasive” do not fit the tone.
Step 3: Conclusion.
The answer is: patent … improbable.
The playwright’s approach is (i) .............. in that her works (ii) .............. the theatrical devices normally used to create drama on the stage.
(A) pedestrian
(B) startling
(C) celebrated
(D) jettison
(E) experiment with
(F) distill
The playwright’s approach is (i) .............. in that her works (ii) .............. the theatrical devices normally used to create drama on the stage.
(A) pedestrian
(B) startling
(C) celebrated
(D) jettison
(E) experiment with
(F) distill
Show Hint
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Step 1: Understand the sentence.
The playwright is unusual or unconventional because she avoids the usual theatrical devices. This requires a strong, surprising description.
Step 2: Blank (i).
“Startling” means surprising or unconventional, which fits perfectly. “Pedestrian” means ordinary, the opposite of what is meant. “Celebrated” is too neutral.
Step 3: Blank (ii).
She rejects or discards traditional devices. “Jettison” means to throw away or abandon—exactly right. “Experiment with” means still using them, which contradicts the idea. “Distill” means refine, not reject.
Step 4: Conclusion.
Thus, the correct pair is: startling … jettison.
Scientists are not the only persons who examine the world about them by the use of rational processes, although they sometimes (i) .............. this impression by extending the definition of “scientist” to include anyone who is (ii) .............. in his or her investigational practices.
Blank (i)
(A) conceal
(B) create
(C) undermine
Blank (ii)
(D) intuitive
(E) haphazard
(F) logical
Scientists are not the only persons who examine the world about them by the use of rational processes, although they sometimes (i) .............. this impression by extending the definition of “scientist” to include anyone who is (ii) .............. in his or her investigational practices.
Blank (i)
(A) conceal
(B) create
(C) undermine
Blank (ii)
(D) intuitive
(E) haphazard
(F) logical
Show Hint
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Step 1: Analyze the contrast.
The opening says: “Scientists are not the only persons who examine the world by rational processes.” But they sometimes give the opposite impression by broadening the definition of “scientist.”
Step 2: Blank (i).
They sometimes “create” this impression. “Conceal” and “undermine” do not logically fit the sentence.
Step 3: Blank (ii).
The definition is broadened to include anyone who is rational. So the right word is “logical.” “Intuitive” and “haphazard” are opposites of rational.
Step 4: Conclusion.
Therefore, the correct pair is: create … logical.
Top Questions on Sentence Completion
Early critics of Emily Dickinson’s poetry mistook for simplemindedness the surface of artlessness that in fact she constructed with ...............
- GRE - 2025
- Verbal Reasoning
- Sentence Completion
The macromolecule RNA is common to all living beings, and DNA, which is found in all organisms except some bacteria, is almost as ...............
- GRE - 2025
- Verbal Reasoning
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Linguistic science confirms what experienced users of ASL—American Sign Language—have always implicitly known: ASL is a grammatically .............. language, as capable of expressing a full range of syntactic relations as any natural spoken language.
- GRE - 2025
- Verbal Reasoning
- Sentence Completion
Dreams are .............. in and of themselves, but, when combined with other data, they can tell us much about the dreamer.
- GRE - 2025
- Verbal Reasoning
- Sentence Completion
- Each of the following questions includes a sentence with a blank indicating that something has been omitted. Following the sentence will be a list of six words or phrases, each of which could be used to complete the sentence. Select the two answer choices that, when substituted for the blank, fit the context and produce the two sentences most nearly alike in meaning.
- GRE - 2025
- Verbal Reasoning
- Sentence Completion
Questions Asked in GRE exam
For the past two years at FasCorp, there has been a policy to advertise any job opening to current employees and to give no job to an applicant from outside the company if a FasCorp employee applies who is qualified for the job. This policy has been strictly followed, yet even though numerous employees of FasCorp have been qualified for any given entry-level position, some entry-level jobs have been filled with people from outside the company.
If the information provided is true, which of the following must on the basis of it also be true about FasCorp during the past two years?- GRE - 2025
- Reading Comprehension
As an example of the devastation wrought on music publishers by the photocopier, one executive noted that for a recent choral festival with 1,200 singers, the festival’s organizing committee purchased only 12 copies of the music published by her company that was 5 performed as part of the festival.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the support the example lends to the executive’s contention that music publishers have been devastated by the photocopier?- GRE - 2025
- Reading Comprehension
- In the 1970s, two debates engaged many scholars of early United States history. One focused on the status of women, primarily White women. Turning on the so-called golden age theory, which posited that during the eighteenth-century colonial era, American women enjoyed a brief period of high status relative to their English contemporaries and to nineteenth-century American women, this debate pitted scholars who believed women’s lives deteriorated after 1800 against those who thought women’s lives had been no better before 1800. At issue were the causes of women’s subordination: were these causes already in place when the English first settled North America or did they emerge with the rise of nineteenth-century industrial capitalism?
The second debate, the so-called origins debate, concerned the emergence of racial slavery in the southern colonies: was slavery the inevitable result of the deep-rooted racial prejudice of early British colonists or did racial prejudice arise only after these planters instituted slave labor?
Although these debates are parallel in some respects, key differences distinguished them. Whereas the debate over women’s status revolved around implicit comparisons of colonial women to their counterparts in the antebellum period (1800--1860), thus inviting comment from scholars of both historical periods, the origins debate was primarily confined to a discussion about slavery in colonial America. Second, in contrast to the newness of the debate over women’s status and its continued currency throughout the early 1980s, the debate over race and slavery, begun in the 1950s, had lost some of its urgency with the publication of Morgan’s American Slavery, American Freedom (1975), widely regarded as the last word on the subject.
Each debate also assumed a different relationship to the groups whose histories it concerned. In its heyday, the origins debate focused mainly on White attitudes toward Africans rather than on Africans themselves. With few exceptions, such as Wood’s Black Majority (1974) and Mullin’s Flight and Rebellion (1972), which were centrally concerned with enslaved African men, most works pertaining to the origins debate focused on the White architects, mostly male, of racial slavery. In contrast, although women’s historians were interested in the institutions and ideologies contributing to women’s subordination, they were equally concerned with documenting women’s experiences. As in the origins debate, however, early scholarship on colonial women defined its historical constituency narrowly, women’s historians focusing mainly on affluent White women.
Over time, however, some initial differences between the approaches taken by scholars in the two fields faded. In the 1980s, historians of race and slavery in colonial America shifted their attention to enslaved people; interest in African American culture grew, thereby bringing enslaved women more prominently into view. Historians of early American women moved in similar directions during the decade and began to consider the effect of racial difference on women’s experience.- GRE - 2025
- Reading Comprehension
- The most plausible justification for higher taxes on automobile fuel is that fuel consumption harms the environment and thus adds to the costs of traffic congestion. But the fact that burning fuel creates these “negative externalities” does not imply that no tax on fuel could ever be too high. Economics is precise about the tax that should, in principle, be levied to deal with negative externalities:
the tax on a liter of fuel should be equal to the harm caused by using a liter of fuel.
If the tax is more than that, its costs (including the inconvenience to those who would rather have used their cars) will exceed its benefits (including any reduction in congestion and pollution).- GRE - 2025
- Reading Comprehension
- Objectively, of course, the various ecosystems that sustain life on the planet proceed independently of human agency, just as they operated before the hectic ascendancy of Homo sapiens. But it is also true that it is difficult to think of a single such system that has not, for better or worse, been substantially modified by human culture. Nor is this simply the work of the industrial centuries. It has been happening since the days of ancient Mesopotamia. It is coeval with the origins of writing, and has occurred throughout our social existence. And it is this irreversibly modified world, from the polar caps to the equatorial forests, that is all the nature we have.
- GRE - 2025
- Reading Comprehension