David Livingstone

Today’s SAT question of the day is a two-blank question about explorer David Livingstone.

The first blank tells us that he has a certain kind of reputation – we just don’t know what it is yet, so we’ll have to keep reading.

The second blank helps us unpack the sentence: some revile him, while others…blank him.  Let’s see what revile means.

If you are familiar with this word, great! Move on to the next step. If not, let’s take a look at revile. It sounds like vile, which means awful, horrible, gross, etc., so it seems like the first group of folks think Mr. Livingstone is pretty bad news.

Since there is a contrast clue here (while), we know that the second group must think the opposite of him, or think that he is an okay guy.  Now we can eliminate any answer choices with negative words in the second blank (which gets rid of vilify, dismiss, and castigate).

Now we’re back to the first blank about his reputation. We’ve figured out that he has fans and critics, so his reputation looks like it’s a mixed bag – we’ll need a word that means it has two sides to it. Dichotomous fits the bill perfectly, and even if you weren’t sure what it meant, you might remember that words with a Greek origin use the prefix di- to mean two.

None of our top 100 words showed up in this question, but castigate and pristine are good words to know! (Hints: The boy’s mother frequently castigated him for keeping his room in less-than-pristine condition; she hated to scold him, but she liked him to keep his room spotless.)