Pick out the most effective word(s) from the given words to fill in the blank…

Concept: Sentence-completion vocabulary questions test whether a word's core meaning and typical usage fit the logical relationship signalled by the sentence's connector. Here, ‘in spite of’ signals that the action continues despite an opposing circumstance — the wife's disapproval — so the blank needs a word that captures continuing an action against opposition, not stopping it or refusing it.

Application: In ‘He ...... in wearing the old fashioned coat in spite of his wife's disapproval,’ the missing word must combine with ‘in’ before ‘wearing’ and carry the sense that he keeps wearing the coat regardless of his wife's objection. ‘Persists in doing something’ is the standard idiom for continuing an action despite resistance, so ‘persists’ completes the sentence both grammatically and meaningfully: ‘He persists in wearing the old fashioned coat in spite of his wife's disapproval.’

• insists: means to demand or assert something firmly, and its standard construction is ‘insists on doing’ something — not ‘insists in doing’ — so it does not combine with the ‘in’ already in the sentence, besides its core meaning of demanding not matching the sense of continuing an action.

• desists: means to stop or refrain from doing something, and its standard construction is ‘desists from doing’ — again the wrong preposition for ‘in’ — and its meaning of stopping runs opposite to the continued coat-wearing the sentence describes.

• resists: means to actively oppose or withstand something; it does not combine naturally with ‘in’ either, and its meaning would mean refusing to wear the coat altogether, contradicting the continued action the sentence describes.

Cross-check: only ‘persist’ pairs naturally with the preposition ‘in’ already present in the sentence, and only its meaning — continuing an action despite opposition — matches ‘in spite of his wife's disapproval.’ Both the grammar and the meaning converge on the same option.