(GRE) Sentence Completion 2

1. The composition of that painting is so _______ and direct that the casual observer might think that it did not require much ______.

regimented...talent
complex...skill
beautiful...feeling
simple...thought
emotional...consideration

2. Filmed on a ludicrously _____ budget and edited at breakneck speed, Melotti's documentary nontheless ______ the Cannes critics with its trenchancy and verve.

low...disappointed
inflated...distracted
uneven...amused
disproportionate...appalled
inadequate...surprised

*trenchancy - keenness and forcefulness of thought or expression or intellect

3. The _____ of the desert explains why so many Egyptian mummies are still intact, whereas humidity of the tombs in tropical rain forests supports the agents of decay so that few Aztec mummies have ______.

heat...survived
aridity...endured
anhydration...decayed
barrennes...proliferated
seclusion...surfaced

4. They ______ until there was no recourse but to _______ a desperate, last-minute solution to the problem.

betrayed...try
delayed...envision
procrastinated...implement
debated...maintain
filibustered...reject

*envision - predict, foresee
*filibuster - obstruct deliberately by delaying
*recourse - assistance/refuge

5. The Wankel Rotary Engine was an engineering marvel that substantially reduced automobile exhaust emotions, but because it was less fue-efficient than the standard piston-cylinder engine, it was ______ in the early 1970s when _____ pollution gave way to panic over fuel shortages.

needed...disillusionment with
conceived...attention on
modified...opinion on
abandoned...preoccupation with
discarded...interest in

6. Friendship, no matter how ______, has its boundaries; ______ advice, when thrust insistently upon one, is rarely an act of friendship, regardless of the adviser's intent.

cool...contradictory
enjoyable...obverse
intimate...unsolicited
distant...marital
special...desired

Obverse - the more conspicuous(obvious) of two alternatives or cases or sides

7. Anarchists contend that government is by definition the repression of natural human desire, and their _______ rivals concur; it is over the ______ of this definition that the two groups battle.

sympathetic...phraseology
perennial...semantics
ideological...implications
fascistic...expression
fiercest...etiology

*perennial - lasting an indefinitely long time
*etiology - the cause of a disease

8. Despite generous helpings of _____ from a group of _____ critics, this iconoclastic poet's three volumes hae sold steadily.

zeal...hidebound
mockery...obscure
tedium...respected
abuse...ineffectual
vitriol...influential

*hidebound - stubbornly conservative and narrow-minded
*vitriol - bitterness
*iconoclastic - unorthodox

9. Because the different components of the film industry were "vertically" oriented - arranged so that all ____, from production to projection were held by one company. It was _____ the monopolistic practices would arise.

opportunities for control...inevitable
burdens of business...understandable
exercises of power...appropriate
means of solicitation...predictable
perquisites of commerce...unsavory

10. From the _____ that the peasants tried to conceal as they knelt before the body of the dictator's son, I concluded that, far from affection, it was _____ that had brought them to the wake.

hatred...sarcasm
reticence...violence
diligence...adulation
trepidation...fear
sorrow...patriotism

*peasant - a person of a low social class
*wake - a vigil held over a corpse the night before burial