This opposition is not a strong "A / not-A" sort of opposition (like kind / unkind). Instead, it is an opposition that is only separated by a “fine line.” It is best to consider two things that might seem to be alike even if they are distinct (and ultimately opposed). When someone is “penurious,” he or she is either very poor or perhaps just very cheap. The former really does not fit well with any of the potential answers, but the latter, stronger option does pair well with “frugality.” When someone is “frugal,” he or she lives simply, though this need not be completely penurious in a negative sense. There is a fine line between the two—and this is what the question demands!

Since René valued people in this manner, he would judge his uneducated neighbors to be of low value. He would hold them in “low esteem,” literally, “low estimate.” When someone scorns something, he or she values believes it to be of little or now value, particularly with contempt. This is clearly the case with his undervaluing of them, as is indicated by the relative clause “whom he ignored as worthless nobodies.”

"Despite" is a word that tells us that the first half of the sentence is going to contradict or qualify the second half. So we need a word that means the opposite of "insincere," which would be "sincere" or "honest." Another word for honest is "candor."

"Clemency" means mercy or forgiveness. "Fidelity" means loyalty or faithfulness. "Hyperbole" means exaggeration or overstatement. "Nostalgia" means a sentimentality or fondness for the past. "Onus" means duty or responsibility.

Since we know that Linnaeus helped establish the Latin naming convention, we can infer that his system had something to do with organizing knowledge of living things. So, we're looking for a noun that means something like "systematization." While "disorganization" might look like a good initial choice because it includes the word "organization," it is not the best answer choice since the "dis-" prefix means not, so it means "the disruption of an orderly system," and not the creation of one. "Classification," on the other hand, means "the action or process of classifying something according to shared qualities or characteristics," so it is the best answer.

The key word here is “formalized action.” A “ritual” is not merely a religious action but instead can apply to any kind of sequence of actions that are done according to a certain prescribed order. The word is related to other words like “rite” and “ritualistic.”

There are two key words in this sentence, “cogent” and “invalidating.” The word “cogent” means “logical” or “convincing.” When something “invalidates” an argument, it makes it no longer hold. The contrast in this sentence is between the cogency that John believes his reasoning has and the number of invalidities that it has in reality. When someone commits a fallacy, he or she makes an error in reasoning. The word is related to words like “infallible” and “false.”

"Probity" means honesty or integrity. "Philanthropy" means charity or generosity. "Guile" means slyness or cleverness. "Efficacy" means effectiveness or productiveness. "Anachronism" means error in time placement.

Under certain circumstances you might be surprised to find a skeptic (if she were skeptical about whether a fair could be fun), a refugee (if she were fleeing from carnies), or a busybody (if her busyness was of a type that would keep her from having time to go to a fair), but the best fit here is "recluse"—someone who would rarely want to be out in public.

We can infer from the sentence that we need to pick out a word that means something like "sign," because the season is expected to arrive "when the first bird is spotted." "Concluder" cannot be the correct answer, then, because it is an antonym of the word we're looking for, which refers to something that heralds the arrival of something, not its conclusion. "Harbinger" is a noun meaning "a person or thing that announces or signals the approach of another" or "a forerunner of something"; it is the correct answer because it best fits the sentence's context.