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As we live and Shmoop, another question… Which words could fill in the blanks so that

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the sentence below makes sense?

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Born in the 1770s, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge espoused a new style

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of poetry in which the blank of the common man trumped stylized and formal language. 

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The sentence is saying that Wordsworth and Coleridge got way more excited about the everyday

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language of the common man than fancy words and complicated sentences.

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So the key to this one is that the word in the blank has to have something to do with

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language. (A) doesn’t fit at all, because a “plight”

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is a dangerous situation. (B) is a good bet, because diction means the

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choice and use of words in speech and writing.

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We’ll keep going to make sure there’s nothing better, though.

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“Reinstatement” means to restore a previous condition, which has nothing to do with language.

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So (C) is just wasting our time. “Tone” is kind of plausible, since a person

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can have a tone in the way they speak.

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It has more to do with attitude than the actual words, though, so (B), “diction,” is still

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a better choice. (E) makes no sense whatsoever. Fervor is when

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somebody gets really intense about something.

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It doesn’t have a lot to do with language necessarily.

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Looks like the answer is definitely (B).

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As in, “Beware Romantic poets on a rampage.”

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