ShmoopTube

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To Shmoop or not to Shmoop, that is... not this question...

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Which word could fill in the blank so that the sentence below makes sense?

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I watered the houseplant every day, so I felt a certain sense of pride in knowing that I

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had helped to blank it as I watched it grow.

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Here are the potential answers.

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Whoever's talking here is bragging about their green thumb.

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So the word in the blank has got to have something to do with helping things "grow."

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We can eliminate (B) and (D) immediately, since "neglect" and "starvation" don't

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exactly contribute to healthy houseplants...

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...which suddenly explains why no one asks us to house sit for them anymore.

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(A) is in the right ball park. Fertilizing a plant definitely helps it grow.

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"Fertilize" refers to adding extra special nutrients, though, and earlier in the sentence

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the speaker only mentioned watering the plant. We can cross (E) off the list as well, because

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we don't usually "increase" to describe the growing of plants.

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The answer can only be (C), which totally makes sense. When you nurture a plant correctly,

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it most certainly grows.

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Unless we take care of them, because then they die horrible deaths. Really...don't

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give us your plants. We're not even joking here.

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