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Question

Difficulty: EasyVocabulary and Word Meaning in Context

Read the excerpt below carefully:

"In response to the severe drought affecting the agricultural belt, farming communities were compelled to husband their remaining water stores until the arrival of the seasonal rains."

Which of the following options best expresses the contextual meaning of husband as used in the excerpt?

  1. conserve and use frugallyAnswer
  2. B
    marry or take as a spouse
  3. C
    exhaust completely
  4. D
    distribute generously

Answer

conserve and use frugally
In the context of dealing with drought and limited water supplies, the verb 'husband' signifies managing resources with care, economy, and frugality to make them last.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the sentence context
The sentence discusses farming communities dealing with a severe drought and managing limited water stores.
Contextual word meaning requires determining how the surrounding scenario conditions the meaning of the target word.
2
Determine the grammatical role and contextual sense of the highlighted word
'Husband' is used here as a verb meaning to carefully manage, save, or use resources economically.
Words often shift meaning based on part of speech; as a verb applied to 'water stores', 'husband' means to conserve.
3
Evaluate options against the contextual sense
'conserve and use frugally' fits syntactically and semantically into the sentence.
Substituting 'conserve and use frugally' preserves the logic of preserving water during a drought.

Key Concept

Contextual Word Meaning (Verb Usage of Common Nouns)
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Topics

Vocabulary and Word Meaning in Context

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