Question

Although Clifton often appeared _______________, he actually devoted ______________ amount of time trying to keep up a neat appearance.
a. Orderly... an enormous
b. Dishevelled... an inordinate
c. Annoyed... an unfortunate
d. Distracted... an unrealistic
e. Agitated... a considerable

Answer 1

Hint: Read the sentence carefully as there is a hint given as what you have to choose – it is focusing on the fact that Clifton spends a lot of time trying to keep a neat appearance. So you need to find why he needs to spend so much time to keep neat.

Complete solution: Here as you can understand from the sentence given above that Clifton invested a lot of time to try to keep himself clean. What does this imply? Well, this implies that he did not appear clean. So by this explanation you need to find a word opposite in meaning to clean for the first blank.
Saying that, the only opposite word for clean in the options are given in option – b, i.e. dishevelled, which means ‘untidy’. Therefore, that is the correct answer.
Now, we can also look at the meaning of inordinate to make sure that option b is correct, inordinate means – excessive or large. Well, this does complete the sentence that he spends a large amount of time trying to keep clean. So, option – b is indeed correct.
The other options are incorrect because they do not mean neat or clean.

Note: If you are familiar with the meanings and have a good hold on vocabulary. It will be very easy for you to eliminate the options that are incorrect. To make it easier go with filling the first blank first.