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Difficulty: MediumDecoding Low-Frequency Academic and Technical Words

While the board of trustees initially seemed willing to countenance the university's controversial restructuring plan, the sudden and fierce opposition from both faculty and alumni forced them to table the measure indefinitely. Ultimately, they realized they could not formally permit or support a policy that so clearly threatened academic freedom, regardless of the projected financial savings, thereby avoiding a prolonged campus crisis.

As it is used in the passage, the underlined word countenance most nearly means which of the following?

  1. A
    a person's facial expression
  2. B
    publicly oppose or criticize
  3. formally permit or tolerateAnswer
  4. D
    summarize the key points of

Answer

formally permit or tolerate
The correct answer is 'formally permit or tolerate'. The passage describes a contrast between the board's initial willingness to allow the restructuring plan and the subsequent opposition that forced them to stop it. This is reinforced by the explanation in the second sentence that the board realized they could not 'formally permit or support' the policy. Therefore, 'countenance' is used here to mean permit, tolerate, or approve.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the target word in the sentence and determine its part of speech.
The word is 'countenance', used as a verb in the phrase 'willing to countenance the university's controversial restructuring plan'.
Identifying the part of speech helps eliminate definitions that belong to other parts of speech, such as the noun definition referring to facial expression.
2
Analyze the surrounding context and contrast clues to determine the tone and direction of the word.
The passage contrasts the board's initial willingness to 'countenance' the plan with the 'opposition' that forced them to 'table the measure'. Later, it explains they could not 'formally permit or support' it.
The contrast with 'opposition' and the restatement 'could not formally permit or support' provide direct clues that 'countenance' means to allow, permit, or tolerate.
3
Evaluate the choices to find the one that matches this definition of allowing or permitting.
The choice 'formally permit or tolerate' matches the definition perfectly.
This confirms the correct response based on contextual evidence.

Key Concept

Decoding Low-Frequency Academic and Technical Words
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Topics

Decoding Low-Frequency Academic and Technical Words

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