ShmoopTube

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Feel better, live longer--with vitamin Shmoop. Which word could fill in the blank so that

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the sentence below makes sense?

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Brenda had always considered herself a paragon of good health, so she was shocked when the

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doctor told her that the disease had been lying blank in her body.

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And here are the potential answers...

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We always thought that "paragon" sounded like

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a particularly fancy cooking spice...

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...or at least two gons. But it's not.

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The context of this sentence lets us know that it means a person who seems perfect in

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some way.

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So we know that poor Brenda used to think she was the picture of perfection when it

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came to health. Brenda had no idea she was sick before she

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went to the doctor, so neither "active" nor "developed" work.

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She'd have to be pretty unobservant to not notice that she was infected with an active,

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developed disease. Something is "conscious" when it's awake

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and/or knows it exists. If diseases were conscious we'd all be in a lot of trouble.

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If they were "attentive," conscious germs, we'd be in even more trouble.

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Luckily, Conscious Attentive Disease don't exist, so we can eliminate (D) and (C).

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Since "lying dormant" means being inactive,

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(B) is the best answer.

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As in "Get well soon, Brenda!"

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