Quiz created: 170930

Vocabulary Quiz 55

Instructions: Answer the multiple choice questions, guessing if necessary; then click on the "Process Questions" button at the end of the quiz to see your score in the adjacent message box. The program will not reveal which questions you got wrong, only how many points you have. Go back and change your answers until you get them all right. (The message box will rejoice at that point and the page will change color to show it is tickled pink.)

Points to note: (1) Questions with only one possible answer are one point each. (2) Questions with one or more possible answers (represented by check boxes) give a point for each correct answer, but also subtract a point for each wrong answer! (3) The program will not attempt to score your efforts at all if you have not tried at least half of the questions. (4) This quiz is for your own use only. No record of your progress is kept or reported to anyone.

1. “Before Britain’s referendum last June, Leave campaigners promised voters that Brexit would save the taxpayer £350m a week. That pledge was always TENDENTIOUS. But officials in Brussels are drawing up a bill for departure … .” (170211, The Economist, p. 46) A claim that is “tendentious” is
deceptive 
unrealistic 
much debated 
strongly partisan 
No Answer
2. “For all the HYPERBOLE of elections, expectations are modest in hard-bitten places like Double Springs [Alabama] and —helpfully for Mr Trump— the bar for political honour is low.” (170211, The Economist, p. 25) “Hyperbole” (high-PUR-buh-lee) refers to
confusion 
glitter 
exaggerated speech 
disagreement 
extreme happiness or despair 
No Answer
3. “Whether one regards [postmodernist litterateur] Lacan, who died in 1981, as a thinker of genius and as the greatest theorist of Freudianism of the second half of the twentieth century or rather as the most pompous of OBSCURANTISTS, his impact was enormous.” (170223, New York Review of Books, p. 8) An “obscurantist” is a person
who deliberately seeks to be unintelligible 
mocked by others for unjustified self-esteem 
specializing in an obscure field of knowledge 
who finds the ordinary world difficult to understand or navigate 
who seeks to elevate auditory stimuli above visual ones 
No Answer
4. “[1940s Alabama politician Jim Folsom] was written off as a lightweight showman. DEMOTIC, entertaining, tirelessly peripatetic, the show worked. Rather like Mr Trump’s baseball cap, the army boots he wore on the stump marked him as a regular guy.” (170211, The Economist, p. 25) Something “demotic”
sounds sincere 
is related to ordinary people 
is witty but biting, as satire 
is slightly scary in a way that attracts attention 
No Answer
5. “[1940s Alabama politician Jim Folsom] was written off as a lightweight showman. Demotic, entertaining, tirelessly PERIPATETIC, the show worked. Rather like Mr Trump’s baseball cap, the army boots he wore on the stump marked him as a regular guy.” (170211, The Economist, p. 25) A person who is “peripatetic”
evokes sympathy 
explains things well 
exhibits great generosity 
is meticulous about getting facts right 
constantly walks around 
No Answer
6. “AID [Artificial Insemination by Donor] was treated by at least one American court as a species of adultery and its progeny deemed illegitimate in the eyes of the law. IVF [In Vitro Fertilization] led to anguish among some THEOLOGIANS about whether ‘test-tube’ babies would have souls.” (170218, The Economist, p. 9) A “theologian” is
a Catholic priest 
a Baptist minister 
a philosopher concerned with the nature of god 
a Congressional lawyer charged with reviewing potential legislation for its moral implications 
a stick-in-the-mud 
No Answer
7. “European leaders now fear that the Kremlin will exploit and manipulate a vain American president and his GULLIBLE advisers and intensify its bullying of Russia’s Western neighbors.” (170303, The Week, p. 14) Someone who is “gullible” is
easily deceived 
inclined to act on gut instinct 
new on the job 
eager for conflict 
deserving of pity 
No Answer
8. “But Mr Putin began a pivot towards Asia in the mid-2000s, well before Mr Obama undertook his own version of such a manoeuvre. Initially a FEINT as much as a strategy, one conceived as a response to what Mr Putin saw as Western hostility, it has since acquired substance.” (170211, The Economist, p. 19) A “feint” is
an aspiration, especially one that cannot immediately be achieved 
an expensive plan 
an effort to make amends for one’s earlier actions 
a deceptive action intended to divert attention from one’s real plans 
No Answer
9. “Now the high-flying song and dance man, of manic energy and RAVENOUS narcissism and colossal neediness, will take the oath as our forty-fifth president. The lobbyists are gathering, the would-be courtiers, the place-servers … .” (161222, New York Review of Books, p. 12) “Ravenous” refers to being
pathological 
hungry 
able to fly 
self-centered 
unusual 
No Answer

      Points out of 9:


Awesomeness
Score
Awesomeness Score: The following awesomeness score is a measure of how much guessing you did to get all items right. It is 100 if you got all questions right when you clicked the process button for the first time. It gets proportionately lower if it took more clicks, until it hits 0 if your clicks exceeded the number of questions.



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This consummately cool, pedagogically compelling, self-correcting,
multiple-choice quiz was produced automatically from
a simple text file of questions using D.K. Jordan's
dubiously original, but publicly accessible
Think Again Quiz Maker
of September 6, 2015.