Verbal Question on Practice Test 3 ("Although the woman...")

[valeriac.guerrero]

Hi,

I have been trying to understand unsuccesfully a question that appeared on the verbal section in the Practice Test 3.

This is the question:

Although the woman never refused a dinner invitation from a man who was not ______ , she made an exception in Adam’s case, because he was too agreeable, even for her.

a) contentious
b) complacent
c) altruistic
d) conscientious
e) sympathetic

The answer is A, but I do not fully understand why. I have been discussing this question with some friends and they think that she did not go out with Adam, because he was too agreeable for her (they are interpreting 'agreeable' as someone who says yes to everything). On the other hand, I think that she liked men who were not nice, as long as they were not violent ('contentious'). But she did go out with Adam, because he was too nice.

So, can anyone please tell me what do you interpret from this question?

If this is not the right forum to place this question, I am sorry. I tried to look for any previous discussion regarding this question, but did not find anything.

Thanks.

[tommywallach]

Hey Valeriac,

Let's translate the original sentence:

Although the woman never refused a dinner invitation from a man who was not _______, she made an exception...

Though she never said no to dinner with a man who wasn't ______, she made an exception...

So the word "though" sets up disagreement between two parts of a sentence. The first part says she never said no, which means she must have said no in the second half (the exception). So now we have:

Though she never said no to dinner with a man who wasn't ______, she said no to Adam, because he was too agreeable, even for her.

So Adam is TOO agreeable. That means she usually likes agreeable men, so we need a word in the blank for the people she doesn't like (because of the wasn't right before the blank).

a) contentious - CORRECT! This doesn't mean "violent," by the way, it means "argumentative".
b) complacent - not the same as argumentative
c) altruistic - this actually has positive spin
d) conscientious - this has positive spin, too!
e) sympathetic - this also has positive spin!

Hope that helps!

-t