ShmoopTube

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And here's your shmoop du jour brought to you by mysterious

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disappearances by the way has anyone seen our ham sandwich [girl using binoculars in the trees]

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alright check out the following passage let's just read it Roanoke was a colony

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established by English settlers in the 1580s the group of colonists who had

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settled on Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina mysteriously disappeared

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after three years had passed without any supplies from England their fate is

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unknown and the only clue is the word Croatoan carved into a tree on the

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deserted island there are many theories to explain the colonists disappearance

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some more preposterous than others but it is unlikely that the truth will ever

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be uncovered unless you watch The X Files

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all right the word preposterous most nearly means what? it comes before

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posterous. All right here the potential answers [mumbling]

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all right well there are endless theories about what happened at Roanoke [Woman stood by a wooden house at Roanoke]

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from starvation, to aliens, to starving alien, what does it mean if some of them

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are preposterous well it's actually a bit difficult to infer the exact meaning

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of the word from this passage but we can use a little creative problem-solving to [alien beamed up by spacecraft]

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at least remove the incorrect answer option B and C basically mean the same

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thing to be plausible essentially means to be supported by firm evidence as in [An alient spacecraft between two moons]

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it is plausible that texting and driving is dangerous [person texting while driving]

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like seriously people don't do it but because two of these answers mean the

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same thing well they can't be right deduction it's a lovely thing bye B and C [Spacecraft fires at two moons and they explode]

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And impossible doesn't quite make sense in the context here theories are

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credible or not credible as in the theory of gravity [Person parachuting in the air]

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probably credible the theory that lizard men live in the earth..not so much yeah

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but we wouldn't describe a theory as impossible even in Mordor. The dictionary [lizard man pointing to lord sauron's eye]

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definition of preposterous is contrary to nature, reason or common sense like

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Adam Sandler's movie career.. we love you, Adam. Sing the Hanukkah song again

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and the answer choice that most closely matches the definition of preposterous

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is A the word preposterous most nearly means far-fetched or ridiculous and now [The letter A surrounded by fireworks going off]

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for our next mysterious disappearance will discuss... where coins go when

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they fall into the couch, or how about socks in the washing machine [lzard man with piles of coins underground]

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maybe there's a vortex in there

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