ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by elevated language. Oxygen masks may be

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required.

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How would you correct the underlined portion below, if at all?

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As one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century, Winston Churchill uplifted Great

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Britain—and the world—with his fantastic speeches.

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This sentence is about as elevated as it gets.

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Both the topic...history...and the elevated language...uplifted...signal that the underlined

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portion needs to be as highfalutin as possible.

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Knowing this allows us to eliminate (A) pretty easily.

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"Fantastic" is the kind of adjective that an elementary teacher scribbles on a test

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beside a smiley face, not the sort of word we use to describe one of the greatest orators

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ever.

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Choice (B) doesn't make the cut either.

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Even if we didn't know the meaning of "repartee"—which means to joke or banter with someone—"witty"

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doesn't quite seem like it can uplift a nation.

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(D) is suitably elevated, but the word "uplifting" is used elsewhere in the sentence.

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This redundancy downgrades (D)'s smarty-pants rating and takes it out of the running.

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Which leaves us with choice (C), the correct answer. The word "oration" is a fancy

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word for fancy speeches given on fancy occasions.

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Fancy that...

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