GRE® Practice | Text Completion Question 12

This GRE text completion question requires one to identify a word that is synonymous with "overcome", "avoid", "find a way out". Try the question without looking at the answer explanation. If you face difficulty in arriving at the correct answer, take help from the detailed explanation provided below.

Question 12: Getting a private pilot's license is expensive affair in Europe, but this problem can be _______ if one obtains a license from certain south-east Asian countries where the cost of the license is much lesser.

1. prevaricated
2. excluded
3. exacerbated
4. circumvented
5. averted

---

---

---

Explanatory Answer

S No.	Word	Meaning
1	prevaricated	deliberately misled
2	excluded	left something out of consideration
3	exacerbated	made a bad condition worse
4	circumvented	avoided
5	averted	warded off, or prevented

Understanding the context can sometimes clearly tell us the meaning of the word which has to be placed there.

The cost of getting a private pilot's license is very high in Europe and lower in some south-east Asian countries. If a prospective pilot has to get his or her license in Europe, he or she will face the problem of high cost. But this cost can be avoided (using our own word here) if the license is obtained in a south-east Asian country. The only word which has the same meaning as “avoided” is circumvented. Answer option D.

Averted is a close answer option, but it is not correct because when a problem is averted, it goes away, or does not happen. In this case, the costs will still remain high in Europe even if pilots get their licenses in Asia. So the problem is only circumvented.

Choice D is the correct answer.