In the given passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage intently and choose the most appropriate option to fill in each blank:
Global sustainability discourse has not so much evolved as ossified into a lexicon of managerial (1) _____—terms engineered more for reputational lubrication than ecological redress. What was once a moral reckoning with planetary precarity now traffics in dashboards and metrics, calibrated less to redistribute power than to launder it. Words like “resilience,” ”stakeholder engagement,” and “net-zero” populate position papers, their meanings stretched until they acquire the elasticity of (2) _____.In this semantic economy, language ceases to be revelatory and becomes performative. Reports teeter on euphemism; declarations bristle with procedural piety. Crises are not named; they are (3) _____ into ‘developmental challenges.’ The grammar of suffering is bleached, even as the facts remain uncompromising. What emerges is not truth, but a choreography of credibility—an affective simulation of care. Meanwhile, epistemic asymmetries persist: indigenous knowledge is (4) _____ as “local insight,” offered just enough space to decorate, never to reorient. Environmental justice, once confrontational, now wears a diplomatic smile, folded neatly into intergovernmental communiqués. If sustainability is to escape the orbit of self-congratulation, it must surrender its obsession with optics and inhabit the discomfort of history. Anything less is not stewardship—it is semantic (5) _____ masquerading as progress.
What should come in the place of blank number (3)?
- (a)confronted
- (b)domesticated
- (c)pluralized
- (d)aggravated
Answer
Why
Correct — B. The sentence reads: "Crises are not named; they are (3) _____ into ‘developmental challenges.’"
The trigger is the contrast across the semicolon: crises are not named, and are given a milder label instead. To domesticate is to tame something wild until it is manageable and harmless.
A crisis renamed a developmental challenge has been tamed that way. The next line agrees: 'The grammar of suffering is bleached' → option (b).
Why the others are wrong
- (a)confronted — Confronted means faced head-on, the opposite of what the sentence describes. Crises that are 'not named' are being avoided, not faced, and the renaming softens them.
- (c)pluralized — Pluralized means made plural or multiplied. The sentence is about softening crises with a milder name, not about their number, and crises is already plural.
- (d)aggravated — Aggravated means made worse. The sentence runs the other way: the renaming softens the crisis, while the passage says 'the facts remain uncompromising'.
Concept
To domesticate is literally to tame an animal for life alongside people. Used figuratively, it means taking something wild or threatening and making it familiar and harmless.
The passage applies this to language. A crisis is alarming. A developmental challenge sounds like routine work on an agenda. The label removes the alarm without changing the facts.
The semicolon sets the two halves side by side: what is not done, naming, and what is done instead.
The passage says the renaming happens 'even as the facts remain uncompromising'. What gets softened is the language, not the crisis.
Key facts
- Domesticate: literally, to tame an animal. Figuratively, to make something threatening seem tame and manageable.
- Euphemism: a mild word used in place of a harsh or blunt one.
- Aggravate: to make a problem or situation worse.
Study next
Common traps
- Choosing confronted because the passage is about crises, without noticing that 'not named' describes evasion.
- Knowing domesticated only in its farm-animal sense and discarding it as off-topic.
Blank (4) of the same passage, 22 Sep 2025, 09:00, English Q.12, is settled the same way, by the phrase around it: indigenous knowledge 'offered just enough space to decorate, never to reorient'.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.