What goes wrong with my understanding? - Bigbook test 21 TC questions

Hi. I have a few big book questions that I still don’t quite understand after watching the bigbook solution video by Greg.

  1. As serious as she is about the bullfight, she does not allow respect to _____ her sense of whimsy when painting it.
    (A) inspire
    (B) provoke
    (C) suppress
    (D) attack
    (E) satisfy

The Ans is C. Greg said in the video that “As … as” is a CONTRAST phrase and it blows my mind. I always think it is a supporting phrase. I also check greg’s support/contrast clause sheet it doesn’t mean the nature of “as…as”.

Greg explained that the meaning of the sentence is: “She is serious abt bullfight, but actually not that serious”. But I don’t understand Greg’s interpretation and he didn’t explain further as well.

Would like to confirm whether “as…as” is a supporting/contrasting phrase ? Or it can be either supporting/contrasting phrase depending on the context?

  1. The First World War began in a context of jargon and verbal delicacy and continued in a cloud of ------- as ------- as language and literature, skillfully used, could make it.
    (A) circumlocution. literal
    (B) cliché… lucid
    (C) euphemism. impenetrable
    (D) particularity. deliberate
    (E) subjectivity. enthralling

Ans: C

I pick (D) here. Because I thought “verbal delicacy” somewhat means “precision / accuracy”. Not sure if I’m wrong here? I checked the Merriam-Webster dictionary and it seems to suggest so.

Even though I understand Greg’s reasoning here, saying “jargon” is hard to understand. So option C’s pair of words (" euphemism…impenetrable) make more sense to match with the implication of “hard to understand”.

But I don’t know why (D) is logically wrong here given the “verbal delicacy”. Could someone point out my logical mistakes?
Here is my logic:
Option D’s 2nd word: “deliberate” matches with “verbal delicacy”. And “jargon” means terms in specific realms, so it also matches D’s 1st word: “particularity” as it is SPECIFIC.

  1. While Parker is very outspoken on issues she cares about, she is not --; she concedes the – of opposing arguments when they expose weaknesses inherent in her own.
    (A) fickle… validity
    (B) arrogant. restraint
    (C) fanatical… strength
    (D) congenial. incompatibility
    (E) unyielding. speciousness

Ans: C

This one is not difficult. But I want to ask about the phrase “while”. Usually, “while” is a contrast phrase. However, it seems like it is used as a supporting phrase, using math strategy here.

While being outspoken (+ idea), not fanatical (extreme) (+ idea)

So may I ask whether “while” is actually both a support/contrast phrase (just like “or”, according to Greg’s support/contrast phrase spreadsheet) , depending on the context? In other questions, the “while” phrase are sometimes being used as supporting clauses as well.

Thank you very much for reading this post!

Hi, sure thing. Lets start with question 2

Yes, As…as will mean contrast

For example, As much as I like Ice cream, I can’t eat 12 tubs of Ice cream in one day and affect my health.

In this example, similar to the question, regardless of how strong my “feeling about” the subject - Icecream - I will not allow it to affect the other thing thats important - my health

In this case, as serious as she is about the bullfight, she does not allow respect to…

Lets pause here, the words “serius” and “respect” refer to her feelings or attitude towards the bullfight

— her sense of whimsy when painting it

“whimsy” here refers to her feeling/attitude towards painting (the bullfight)

Those are two contrasting feelings/attitudes

Seriousness/ Respect Vs Whimsy

So from a sentence structure perspective, without needing to know that As…as means contrast, we already know that these two attitudes contrast each other

So from that standpoint, seriousness as is her attitude in this case can not support whimsy, or cause it to increase

It can only cause it to decrease, or prevent it

The sentence structure; she does not allow respect to ______ her sense of whimsy

There is only one thing seriousness can do to whimsy, based on this sentence, and it is negative i.e prevent, block etc

Its then a question of picking the right word

the words we will pick will represent the idea being portrayed by jargon and verbal delicacy, with the added qualification of “in a cloud of”

Jargon in this case and most cases will mean words that are used by a specific group and or difficult to understand. The difficult to understand bit, is what matters in this sentence.
Verbal delicacy, just sounds like a delicacy made of words, supporting the previous Idea of difficult to understand

This isn’t something you would be expected to know a definition of.
I would say trying to base your answer on a definition you found on mariam webster vs what the meaning is here is leading you a little astray

“In a cloud of” suggests some level of impreciseness, prevarication if you will

We’re looking for words that represent the idea from jargon and verbal delicacy with the additional context of the cloudy language and literature.

While is contrast yes, and there is contrast here.

Contrast will not always mean word and opposite.

In this case, in the simplest form, this sentence says Parker is A not B

A being Very Outspoken, B being fanatical