Fill in the blanks - While the delegate

Question

While the delegate clearly sought to _______ the optimism that has emerged recently, she stopped short of suggesting that the conference was near collapse and might produce nothing of significance.A. substantiateB. dampenC. encourageD. elucidateE. rekindleThe answer is B , I thought it as A. How is it B and what does 'stopped short of suggesting' mean, she suggested or she stopped suggesting? I'm hearing it for the first time.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Mercy JhansiThe answer is B , I thought it as A. How is it B ...?

Describing the conference as "near collapse" and saying that it "might produce nothing of significance" is not very optimistic. If the delegate was about to say such things, she certainly didn't believe that people should be optimistic about the conference. So she was trying to lessen the optimism, trying to dampen the optimism.

Mercy Jhansiwhat does 'stopped short of suggesting' mean

When you "stop short of" doing something, you stop yourself before you do it. So, although she could have suggested those things about the conference, she did not. She only said similar things that were not so extreme, but had the same general meaning.

CJ

Mercy Jhansi · Answer

I'm not clear enough yet. . Weaken the optimism is being pessimistic and stopped short of suggesting something negative, is being optimistic. If the delegate weakens the optimism why should the delegate stop short of suggesting something negative.

CalifJim · Answer

Mercy JhansiWeaken the optimism is being pessimistic

Not exactly. She was pessimistic because she understood the situation better than the others. But the others didn't understand, so they were optimistic. She wanted to let them know that they were too optimistic, but she didn't want to make them feel really bad. She wanted to weaken their optimism. Another way of saying this is that she wanted to dampen their optimism.

Mercy Jhansistopped short of suggesting something negative, is being optimistic.

No. By stopping short of saying something very negative, she was trying to say negative things in a weaker way so that the others would not feel so bad. She was not being optimistic at all. She was being realistic. She saw things as they really were, not so very wonderful as the others wrongly believed.

Mercy JhansiIf the delegate weakens the optimism why should the delegate stop short of suggesting something negative.

Because, as I explained above, she didn't want to upset the others by saying extremely negative things. She said other negative things, but in nicer way. Note the first word "While". That's like "Although". So "Although she wanted to tell the others they were wrong to be optimistic, she didn't say extremely negative things, for example, that the whole conference was worthless". We can only guess that she didn't want to upset the others so she gave a weaker version of the truth.

CJ

Mercy Jhansi · Answer

Wow! The sentence has such an amazing meaning veiled in! Thank you!

Fill in the blanks - While the delegate

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