2012-02-24 09:00:20

At a young age, I was most amazed by the ______ quality of the carnival, the fact that it was here one day and completely gone the next.

A) tensile    B)taut    C) terrestrial    D) temporal    E) tenacious

The correct answer is D

Explanation: This sentence uses a descriptive clause to provide the meaning of the missing word. Everything after the comma describes or defines the missing word. Thus, the missing word means something akin to "brief" or "not permanent," since the "quality of the carnival" that "amazed" the narrator was "the fact that it was  here one day and completely gone the next." "Temporal" means "not lasting forever," so choice D is correct.

None of the other choices work, either:

Tensile: capable of being stretched (this has nothing to do with brevity or not being permanent)

Taut: tight (this has no relationship at all to anything in the prompt)

Terrestrial: earthly (being "earthly" or real has nothing to do with brevity or a lack of permanence)

Tenacious: holding fast (if anything, this is the opposite of a proper answer choice)