Select the option that lists all the INCORRECTLY spelt words in the following…
2025
Select the option that lists all the INCORRECTLY spelt words in the following passage.
The anthropologist’s treatise was lauded for its lucid exposition, yet critiqued for occasional lapses into tendencious interpretation. Some reviewers found the ethonographic methodology inadequite, while others praised its granularity. The appendices, though seemingly superflous, provided ancillary insights that enriched the discourse.
Answer: D. ethonographic, inadequite, superflous — Concept. A spelling item tests one thing: whether a written form matches a form recorded in standard dictionaries. A set-type answer must satisfy two…
- A.
tendencious, ethonographic, superflous
- B.
tendencious, inadequite, appendices
- C.
exposition, tendencious, granularity, inadequite
- D.
ethonographic, inadequite, superflous
Attempted by 7 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept. A spelling item tests one thing: whether a written form matches a form recorded in standard dictionaries. A set-type answer must satisfy two conditions at once — accuracy, every form it lists really does depart from its dictionary spelling, and completeness, no departing form in the text is left out. A spelling that dictionaries record as an accepted variant counts as correct even when it is the rarer of two permitted forms, so a variant must never be counted as an error.
Application. Check each content word of the passage against its dictionary entry and keep only the forms that differ:
Form printed in the passage | Standard dictionary form | Departure? |
|---|---|---|
tendencious | tendentious, with tendencious recorded as an accepted variant spelling | no |
ethonographic | ethnographic | yes |
inadequite | inadequate | yes |
superflous | superfluous | yes |
exposition, granularity, appendices, treatise, methodology, ancillary, discourse | unchanged — each is already the dictionary form | no |
So the passage contains exactly three departures: ethonographic, inadequite, superflous.
Cross-check. Test each offered set against the two conditions:
ethonographic, inadequite, superflous — accurate (all three depart) and complete (no fourth departure exists), so this is the set the stem asks for.
tendencious, ethonographic, superflous — fails accuracy, because tendencious is a permitted variant of tendentious, and also fails completeness, because inadequite is omitted.
tendencious, inadequite, appendices — appendices is the standard Latin-derived plural of appendix, and both ethonographic and superflous are omitted.
exposition, tendencious, granularity, inadequite — exposition and granularity are ordinary dictionary forms, and the two clear departures ethonographic and superflous are omitted.
Method to reuse. Scan for the vowel and consonant clusters that spelling errors usually hide in — an inserted vowel (ethn- becoming ethon-), a swapped ending (-ate becoming -ite), a dropped letter (-luous becoming -lous) — then confirm the survivors in a dictionary before calling any of them an error.
Answer: ethonographic, inadequite, superflous.