Hi, in this question I wasn’t able to get the correct connotation for the blank.
I noticed [While] is drawing contrast. So the two ideas connected with the ‘,’ were contrasted and as Idea 2 is negative, I denoted the the blank to be of positive connotation. But the answer is actually (B) dampen a word with negative connotation. Where did I go wrong?
Thanks in Advance!
Hi, this bit is incorrect. In this particular sentence, suggesting the conference is useless is something mean to do, and the fact that she didn’t do that is a good thing. If you wanna solve it with support/contrast, LHS needs to be a bad thing.
The word “stopped short of” can also indicate this is an extreme question. A less extreme version of saying “the conference is useless” and making people upset is to “dampen their optimism”.
Hope that helps!
This did help. Thanks Ganesh!