Using Context Clues

Read the following sentences. Then, choose the correct answer.

I had been reading about the recent exploration of the river Amazon by an expedition sent out by our government. It was said that the expedition, owing to difficulties, had not thoroughly explored a part of the country lying about the head-waters, some four thousand miles from the mouth of the river.

What does the word expedition mean as used in these sentences?

• a short, pleasurable journey

• a military mission

• a crew of explorers

• a religious crusade

Read the following sentence. Then, answer the following question.

I packed my valise, and took passage on an ancient tub called the 'Paul Jones,' for New Orleans.

What does the sentence communicate about the narrator's actions?

• He packed an overnight bag and boarded an old ship.

• He packed all of his belongings and boarded a small sailboat.

• He took a trunk of treasure aboard a questionable sailing vessel.

• He hired a personal assistant to travel with him on a broken-down boat.

Read the following sentences. Then, answer the question that follows.

I had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distant climes which I never have felt in so uplifting a degree since. I was in such a glorified condition that all ignoble feelings departed out of me, and I was able to look down and pity the untraveled with a compassion that had hardly a trace of contempt in it.

What does the word ignoble mean as used in this excerpt?

• hopeful

• glorious

• shameful

• selfish

Read the following sentences. Then, answer the question that follows.

Father and Mother were Bengalis, of the KSHATRIYA caste. Both were blessed with saintly nature. Their mutual love, tranquil and dignified, never expressed itself frivolously. A perfect parental harmony was the calm center for the revolving tumult of eight young lives.

What does the word frivolously mean as used in the sentences above?

• quietly

• seriously

• calmly

• foolishly

Read the sentence. Then, answer the question that follows.

But I drank in his words hungrily, and with a faith that might have moved mountains if it had been applied judiciously.

What does the word judiciously mean as it is used in the sentence?

• quickly

• hungrily

• prayerfully

• properly

Read the sentences. Then, answer the following question.

I soon discovered two things. One was that a vessel would not be likely to sail for the mouth of the Amazon under ten or twelve years; and the other was that the nine or ten dollars still left in my pocket would not suffice for so imposing an exploration as I had planned, even if I could afford to wait for a ship. Therefore, it followed that I must contrive a new career.

What does the word contrive mean as used in these sentences?

• imagine

• promise

• plan

• forsake

Read the sentence. Then, answer the following question.

As he mellowed into his plaintive history his tears dripped upon the lantern in his lap, and I cried, too, from sympathy.

What does the word plaintive mean as it is used in the sentence?

• complicated

• mournful

• distant

• childlike

Read the sentences. Then, answer the question that follows.

There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in a few thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his progeny.

What is the meaning of progeny as it is used in these sentences?

• animal species

• organisms

• food supply

• descendants

Read the sentence. Then, answer the following question.

All plans, proposals, etc., prior to the nineteenth of April, i.e., to the commencement of hostilities, are like the almanacs of last year; though proper then, are superseded and useless now.

What does the word superseded mean as used in this sentence?

• essential

• relevant

• misguided

• replaced

Read the following sentences. Then, answer the following question.

I entered upon the small enterprise of "learning" twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my time of life. If I had really known what I was about to require of my faculties, I should not have had the courage to begin. I suppose that all a pilot had to do was to keep his boat in the river, and I did not consider that that could be much of a trick, since it was so wide.

What is the meaning of the word faculties as used in the sentences above?

• capabilities

• common sense

• courage

• compassion