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ASVAB Word Knowledge 5.4 Vocab List 170 Views


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ASVAB Word Knowledge 5.4 Vocab List. The word sordid most nearly means what?

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English Language

Transcript

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:02

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by...

00:05

[ whispers ] secrets.

00:06

That's all.

00:09

[ normal voice ] Check out the following sentence.

00:10

Richard was dismissed from the board when his sordid affairs came to light.

00:15

The word sordid most nearly means what?

00:18

Spiteful, immoral, musty, secretive... Yeah, hmm...

00:23

All right, well, Richard must have been up to somethin',

00:25

because the board was having none of it.

00:26

Let's try to figure out what sordid actually means.

00:29

A - spiteful means malicious.

00:31

Richard was probably spiteful, or full of spite,

00:34

after being dismissed, but that doesn't really describe

00:37

his affairs. C - musty means smelling of mold.

00:41

The board itself was probably made up of, uh,

00:43

creaky old aristocrats. They might be musty, moldy,

00:46

but that's also not a description of someone's affairs.

00:49

[ sneeze ] And D - secretive implies something done in, well, secret.

00:53

Affairs are usually done in secret, but it's not

00:56

part of the definition of sordid.

00:57

Sordid means something vile or immoral,

01:00

the sort of thing even the board won't put up with.

01:03

That's why Rick got the boot. So B's the correct answer.

01:06

Richard will probably find another job.

01:09

Now we spoke with the board and, well, we've been sworn to secrecy.

01:14

[ whispers ] Secrets.

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