0

Objective: Fill in the blanks for the sentence.

The sound advice given by the eleventh-century medical scholar Trotula in her writings on women's health ------- some of our assumptions about the inadequacy of medieval medicine.

(A) belies (B) bypasses your answer(C) elucidates (D) compounds (E) camouflages

The correct answer is A. but I think C. because the Trotula explains the assumptions to clarify any misconceptions on the medicine.

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    The sound advice contradicts our assumptions, so you need a verb that shows contradiction as such, and only belies works, among the given choices.
    – Damkerng T.
    Commented Aug 8, 2014 at 19:35

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Here I've rewritten the sentence more simply, putting in some synonyms of belies:

The good medical advice given by Trotula contradicts / is at odds with / calls into question / proves to be false our assumptions that medieval medicine was bad.

The correct answer is belies because reality contradicted our expectations. To use elucidate in a similar sentence, I might say:

The fact that life expectancy in medieval Britain was 35 years old elucidates our assumptions about that period's unsanitary living conditions.

I can use elucidates here because our expectations match reality.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.