Question 183
HardOriginal questionOne dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent of that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles .
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and —something just a little bit near to being of the honour of being owned by Jim.
"Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating." Here "predominating" means
Show the answer and explanation
Correct answer: C
Explanation
The writer lists three things life is made of, and says one of them, sniffles, is predominating.
To predominate is to be the largest or most common part. The joke is that life is mostly small, sad sniffles.
Worth noting
The sentence is a wry joke, not a statement of fact. Reading its tone helps with the word.
- Concept
- Working out a hard word from a sentence's structure
- Typical timeTypical
- 45 s
- Your timeYours
- —
Ten questions from Literary passages, at your own pace.