A words in context question tests whether you can use the passage to find a missing word's meaning. When the blank sums up a change over time, trace what was true first and what happened later. But marks a contrast, while thus marks a result. Use that direction to predict the missing meaning in plain words. Then check each word's exact meaning, because words that feel right can still describe a different kind of change.
Hints
- Hint 1
Look for what had and hadn't happened before the handbook appeared. What do the laboratories' published names tell you?
- Hint 2
Compare the naming practice before and after the handbook. Pay attention to how later researchers used its choice of name.
- Hint 3
In the last sentence, how do drew on and but helped divide the handbook's role? Use that contrast to predict the blank in your own words.
Step-by-step
Trace the change in naming
Step 1Separate preference from a standard
The laboratories had independently begun favoring the same name, but had they agreed on what to publish? They hadn't: this shared preference had not become a common standard, because they hadn't coordinated their usage. A shared preference wasn't yet a shared standard. The blank asks what the handbook helped do beyond that starting point.
- Step 2
Trace what the handbook changed
What changed once the handbook appeared? It used the favored name exclusively, and later researchers routinely cited its usage when rejecting the alternatives. Researchers were now using the handbook as a reason to dismiss competing names, so it did more than record which name they liked. Its choice of name gave researchers a reason to settle on the same name.
- Step 3
Predict the change
The ending says the handbook drew on an emerging preference but helped do something more. What meaning follows from that contrast? Predict help bring about agreement: the preference came first, and the handbook helped it become shared usage. Forestall means prevent, so it points against that result. Circumvent means get around or avoid, which would have the handbook bypassing agreement.
- Step 4
Distinguish creation from approval
Does ratify fit the kind of agreement described here? Ratify means to formally approve an agreement or decision already made. Here, it would mean the handbook approved terminological agreement after researchers had reached it. Forge means to create or bring about, so it names the handbook's role in building agreement out of an unsettled preference. Choice A.