Vocabulary Test 42

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows.[/passage-header]Today every major anthology of nineteenth-century poetry includes examples of the work which Christina Rossetti produced during her long literary career. Born in 1830, she began composing verse at the age of eleven and continued to write for the remaining fifty-three years of her life. Her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, himself a poet and painter, soon recognized her genius and urged her to publish her poems. By the time of her death in 1894, Christina had written more than eleven hundred poems and had published over nine hundred of them. Although this work has earned her recognition as the greatest woman poet of the Victorian Age, there is still no authoritative edition of her poetry. 

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Every survey ever held has shown that the image of an attractive woman is the most effective advertising gimmick. She may sit astride the mudguard of a new car, or step into it ablaze with jewels, she may lie at the man's feet stroking his new socks, she may hoId the petrol pump in a challenging pass, or dance through woodland glades in slow motion in all the glory of a new shampoo. Whatever she does, her image sells. The gynolatry of our civilization is written large upon her face, upon hoardings, cinema screens, television, newspapers, magazines, tins, packets, cartons, bottles, all consecrated to the reigning deity, the female fetish. Her dominion must not be thought to entail the role of women, for she is not a woman. Her glossy lips and matt complexion, her unfocused eyes and flawless fingers, her extraordinary hair all floating and shining, curling and gleaming, reveal the inhuman triumph of cosmetics, lighting, focusing and printing. She sleeps unruffled, her lips red and juicy and closed, her eyes as crisp and black as if newly painted, and her false lashes immaculately curled. Even when she washes her face with a new and creamier toilet soap, her expression is as tranquil and vacant and her paint as flawless as ever. If ever she should appear tousled and troubled, her features are miraculously smoothed to their proper veneer by a new washing powder on a bouillon cube. For she is a doll: weeping, pouting or sinking, running or reclaiming, she is a doll.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Both plants and animals of many sorts show remarkable changes in form, structure, growth habits, and even mode of reproduction in becoming adapted to the different climatic environments, types of the food supply, or mode of living. This divergence in response to evolution is commonly expressed by altering the form and function of some part(s) of the organism, the original identification of which is clearly discernible. For example, the creeping foot of the snail is seen in related marine pteropods to be modified into a flapping organ useful for swimming and is changed into prehensile arms that bear suctorial disks in squids and other cephalopods. The limbs of various mammals are modified according to several different modes of life - for swift running (cursorial) as in the horse and antelope, for swinging in trees (arboreal) as in the monkeys, for digging (fossorial) as in the moles and gophers, for flying (volant) as in the bats, for swimming (aquatic) as in the seals, whales and dolphins, and for other adaptations. The structures or organs that show the main change in connection with this adaptive divergence is commonly identified readily as homologous in spite of great alterations. Thus, the finger and wrist bones of a bat and whale, for instance, have virtually nothing in common except that they are definitely equivalent elements of the mammalian limb.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Are the 1980s and 1990s the era of colour? According to some people, they are. Now you can buy radios and electric fans in lavender and pink. Restaurants have an emphasis on flowers and colourful plates. Cars are corning out in pink and aqua. Even bathroom fixtures are being made in "honeydew" and "blond". Part of the importance of the colour of an object is that the colour affects the way one feels about it. You want a vacuum cleaner to look light and easy, which is why it may be coloured in pastels and light colours. But gardening equipment should look powerful. You would never find a lawn mower in pink, but red would be fine. Not very long ago, sheets were always white and refrigerators commonly came in colours like "old gold", "avocado green" and "copper tone". Now those are thought of as old-fashioned. Popular colours change because fashion influences everything. In fact, new colours often spring from the fashion industry. It's a lot cheaper to make a blouse or skirt than a sofa. After people get used to seeing new colours on clothing or towels, they are ready to accept those colours in carpeting, refrigerators, or cars. Colour analysis consultants have been very successful in recent years. People want to choose the most flattering colours for makeup and clothing. Some car designers are even saying that people may begin buying cars of the colour that goes with their skin colouring. This sounds too extreme. It's hard to believe that people are that impressionable!

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