ACT Reading Quiz: Word Choice

1 After the argument, the house did not exactly 2 return to normal, but something in it settled, 3 the way sediment settles in water left standing 4 overnight. My sister and I still avoided certain 5 topics at dinner, and my mother still left 6 the room whenever my father brought up money, 7 but the sharp edges of the fight had 8 dulled into something we could live around rather 9 than something we had to keep confronting. Nobody 10 apologized, and nothing was resolved in any way 11 a mediator would recognize, yet the household grew 12 quieter, steadier, easier to move through, the tension 13 no longer sitting right at the surface of 14 every conversation.

As it is used in line 2, the word "settled" most nearly means:

1 My grandfather never used more words than a 2 situation required, and when I asked him once 3 why he had stayed at the same job 4 for forty years instead of chasing something grander, 5 his answer was almost insultingly plain: he liked 6 the people, the work paid the bills, and 7 he saw no reason to disrupt a life that 8 was already, in his estimation, sufficient. I had 9 expected some deeper reflection, a story about duty 10 or fear or missed opportunity, and instead I 11 got three short reasons delivered without a trace 12 of apology or elaboration, as though the question 13 itself had struck him as slightly unnecessary.

As it is used in line 5, the word "plain" most nearly means:

1 The attic in July was close in a 2 way that made you want to breathe through 3 your mouth, the heat trapped under the low 4 roof with nowhere to go, thick with the 5 smell of old paper and mothballs. I had 6 gone up looking for a single box of 7 photographs, but within minutes my shirt was damp 8 and my head had begun to ache, the 9 air pressing down on me the same way 10 it must have pressed on whoever sealed these 11 boxes shut decades ago and never opened them 12 again. I found the photographs in eleven minutes 13 and left in ten.

As it is used in line 1, the word "close" most nearly means:

1 The restaurant had enjoyed a remarkable run through 2 the nineties, when a line would form outside 3 before the doors even opened and reservations booked 4 out six weeks in advance. Then, almost overnight, 5 it seemed, the neighborhood changed, rents climbed, and 6 the chef who had built the place's reputation 7 left to open somewhere else. The dining room 8 that had once turned tables three times a 9 night began sitting half empty on Friday evenings, 10 and regulars who had eaten there for a 11 decade started mentioning, almost apologetically, that they had 12 not simply stopped coming out of any complaint 13 but because the city around the restaurant had 14 simply moved on without it.

As it is used in line 1, the word "run" most nearly means:

1 By the mid-1990s, the notion that economic growth alone 2 could measure a nation's well-being had begun to lose 3 currency among policymakers, even as it retained a stubborn 4 hold on public discourse. Economists who had once treated 5 gross domestic product as an unquestioned proxy for prosperity 6 now argued that the figure ignored inequality, environmental cost, 7 and the unpaid labor that sustains every household. Their 8 argument gained little traction in legislatures, where budget debates 9 still revolved around growth rates, but within academic journals 10 the older framework was increasingly treated as an incomplete, 11 even misleading, measure of a country's actual condition.

As it is used in line 3, the word "currency" most nearly means:

1 Geologists studying the ash layer noted that many of 2 the compounds trapped within it were highly volatile, vanishing 3 from the sample within hours unless the rock was 4 sealed immediately after collection. This tendency to evaporate so 5 quickly, long before any laboratory analysis could begin, had 6 frustrated earlier researchers who assumed the missing compounds simply 7 had never been present at all. Only when a 8 team began storing samples in vacuum-sealed containers at the 9 collection site did the true chemical composition of the 10 ash become clear, revealing gases that earlier studies had 11 unknowingly allowed to escape into the open air before 12 they could ever be measured.

As it is used in line 2, the word "volatile" most nearly means:

1 The senator had spent nearly two decades accumulating what 2 aides called political capital, the accumulated trust and obligation 3 that colleagues extend to a legislator who has helped 4 pass their bills, covered for their absences, and stayed 5 quiet during their scandals. She rarely spent this reserve 6 carelessly, preferring to hold it in reserve for the 7 rare vote that might cost her reelection. When she 8 finally called in decades of favors to push the 9 water rights bill through committee, colleagues who owed her 10 little affection but a great deal of obligation fell 11 into line, not because they agreed with the bill 12 but because refusing would have meant defaulting on a 13 debt they could not openly deny owing.

As it is used in line 2, the phrase "political capital" most nearly means:

1 Historians have only recently begun to credit the enslaved 2 laborers who built much of the plantation's irrigation system 3 with the technical ingenuity the project actually required, rather 4 than attributing every innovation to the plantation owner whose 5 name appears on the original survey maps. Account books 6 from the period, when read against the grain of 7 their intended purpose, reveal detailed records of drainage calculations 8 and soil assessments that no absentee owner could plausibly 9 have performed himself, calculations that point instead toward enslaved 10 overseers whose expertise went unrecorded by name for generations. 11 Restoring their contribution to the historical record has meant 12 rereading documents that were never meant to name them.

As it is used in line 1, the word "credit" most nearly means:

1 The novelist's dialogue shifts register constantly, sliding from the 2 clipped, technical vocabulary of the courtroom into the loose, 3 associative rhythms of a character's private thoughts within the 4 same paragraph, often without any typographical warning to the 5 reader. This unmarked slippage unsettles readers accustomed to fiction 6 that announces its transitions with clear breaks or italics, 7 but it also mirrors how people actually move between 8 formal and intimate speech in a single conversation, adjusting 9 their vocabulary to an audience without pausing to signal 10 the change. Critics who find the technique disorienting tend 11 to miss that the disorientation is itself the novel's 12 argument about how thoroughly context governs the way we speak.

As it is used in line 1, the word "register" most nearly means:

1 To determine whether the water supply had been contaminated, 2 technicians took samples back to the lab and grew 3 a culture from each one, allowing any bacteria present 4 to multiply on a nutrient medium until colonies became 5 visible to the naked eye. A culture that remained 6 clear after forty-eight hours suggested the source was likely 7 safe, while one dotted with cloudy growths indicated bacterial 8 contamination requiring further testing before the water could be 9 approved for public use. The technicians noted, however, that 10 some pathogens grow too slowly to appear within that 11 window, meaning a clear culture was not always reliable 12 proof of safety.

As it is used in line 3, the word "culture" most nearly means:

1 My mother's hands trembled slightly as she folded the 2 telegram back into its envelope, but her face was 3 composed, the way it always was when trouble arrived 4 at an inconvenient hour. She set the envelope on 5 the mantel, straightened the tablecloth that did not need 6 straightening, and asked whether anyone wanted more tea. It 7 was only later, when I found her alone in 8 the pantry with the telegram pressed flat beneath a 9 can of flour, that I understood how much that 10 steadiness at the table had cost her, how carefully 11 she had arranged her features into something the rest 12 of us could safely lean against.

As it is used in line 3, the word "composed" most nearly means:

1 The novelist's early work was famous for its 2 spare prose, sentences trimmed of every adjective that 3 did not earn its place, dialogue that left 4 most of what characters felt unsaid, entire scenes 5 built from three or four short lines rather 6 than paragraphs of description. Critics who preferred lusher 7 writing complained that the style felt cold, but 8 her admirers argued that the restraint was the 9 point: by refusing to tell readers how to 10 feel, she forced them to notice the feeling 11 rising in themselves instead, unassisted by the page. 12 Her later novels abandoned that discipline almost entirely, 13 growing baggy with description she once would 14 have cut without hesitation.

As it is used in line 2, the word "spare" most nearly means:

1 Beneath the polite applause after the proposal, a 2 current of skepticism moved through the room that 3 no one addressed directly. Colleagues nodded at the 4 right moments and asked the expected clarifying questions, 5 but the enthusiasm that usually followed a strong 6 pitch was missing, replaced by glances exchanged between 7 people who had clearly discussed their doubts beforehand, 8 probably over coffee before the meeting even started. 9 The presenter, reading the room correctly, ended early 10 and promised a revised version within the week, 11 sensing that pressing forward that afternoon would only 12 invite the objections everyone in the room was 13 visibly holding back.

As it is used in line 2, the word "current" most nearly means:

1 My brother's temper had always been quick, but that 2 winter something in him seemed checked, as though a 3 hand he could not see had reached in and 4 tightened a valve that used to run wide open. 5 He still argued at dinner, still slammed doors when 6 our father needled him about the failed harvest, but 7 the outbursts ended sooner now, snapped off mid-sentence rather 8 than allowed to build toward the shouting matches that 9 had once sent our mother from the table in 10 tears. I never learned what had changed him, only 11 that whatever it was had not softened him so 12 much as restrained the force that used to carry 13 him past any reasonable stopping point.

As it is used in line 2, the word "checked" most nearly means:

1 When the river slows as it nears the sea, 2 the coarse sand it has carried for miles begins 3 to settle first, dropping to the bed within a 4 few hundred meters of where the current loses its 5 push. Finer silt travels farther, drifting outward in a 6 fan that only settles once the water has spread 7 thin enough to lose almost all its force. Over 8 centuries this uneven settling builds the delta layer by 9 layer, coarse grains near the river's mouth and fine 10 mud far out where the water barely moves at 11 all. Geologists reading these layers can tell, long after 12 the river has shifted course, exactly how fast the 13 water once flowed at each point along its path.

As it is used in line 3, the word "settle" most nearly means:

1 My uncle's voice on the phone had a 2 brittle cheerfulness that made me sit up straighter 3 in my chair. He asked about my classes, 4 my apartment, the weather in my new city, 5 each question landing a beat too fast, as 6 though he were reading from a list rather 7 than actually listening for my answers. I had 8 heard that tone only once before, the week 9 after his divorce was finalized, when he called 10 to wish me a happy birthday three days 11 early and then apologized for something that made 12 no sense at all. I did not ask 13 what had happened this time. I simply let 14 him keep talking until the questions ran out.

As it is used in line 2, the word "brittle" most nearly means:

1 When the old clock in the hallway finally stopped, 2 my grandmother did not send for the repairman right away. 3 She left it silent for nearly a month, claiming that 4 the silence itself had arrested something in the house that 5 had been running too fast for years—the arguments, the debts, 6 even her own temper, which had worn a groove into 7 every conversation at the dinner table. My father thought this 8 was nonsense, a sentimental excuse for neglecting a broken machine, 9 but I noticed that the house did seem calmer, as 10 though whatever had been driving us all forward had simply 11 lost its grip. When the repairman finally came, my grandmother 12 watched him rewind the mechanism with something like regret.

As it is used in line 4, the word "arrested" most nearly means:

1 For the first two years at the firm, 2 Denise cultivated the partners the way her mentor 3 had advised: a comment on their golf game, 4 a memo praising their last case, lunches scheduled 5 with just enough regularity to seem accidental. She 6 told herself this was simply how the profession 7 worked, that everyone climbed by such small, deliberate 8 attentions. It was only when a junior associate 9 asked her, without any edge in his voice, 10 whether she actually liked any of the people 11 she spent so much energy impressing, that she 12 realized how little of the effort had been 13 about affection and how much had been about 14 advancement.

As it is used in line 2, the word "cultivated" most nearly means:

1 A tapeworm cannot complete its life cycle within a 2 single host; it requires at least two, an intermediate 3 host in which its larvae mature and a definitive 4 host in whose intestine the adult worm finally reproduces. 5 Because the parasite depends entirely on the physiology of 6 whichever animal currently carries it, natural selection has shaped 7 the worm's behavior to manipulate that animal's actions, sometimes 8 making an infected rodent less cautious around predators so 9 that the parasite can pass more easily into the 10 next creature required to sustain its development. Researchers studying 11 this manipulation increasingly describe infected animals not as victims 12 but as vehicles unwittingly recruited to serve another organism's 13 reproductive schedule.

As it is used in line 2, the word "host" most nearly means:

1 Critics who praised the sculptor's early bronzes often used 2 the word plastic to describe her forms, meaning not 3 that the metal looked artificial but that it seemed 4 capable of further change, as though each curve had 5 been caught mid-transformation rather than fixed forever in its 6 final shape. This quality unsettled some viewers, who expected 7 monuments to project permanence, a sense that the subject 8 had been resolved once and for all. The sculptor 9 herself resisted that expectation, arguing that a figure frozen 10 in a single, definitive pose betrayed the restlessness of 11 the body it claimed to represent, and that true 12 likeness required the illusion of motion still in progress.

As it is used in line 2, the word "plastic" most nearly means: