It is not only the poor and uneducated that fall prey to ____ ; desperate or unhappy individuals from any walk of life or social background can be duped.

The novel is admittedly not the finest example of its genre, but I object to the ____ preface written by a supposed expert on detective fiction from whom we might have expected at least one or two perceptive comments.

With an abiding interest in Medieval poetry, Boris found it difficult to relate to his peers in school whose ____ ran to nothing even remotely literary.

If he had not had the ____ to follow his own iconoclastic theories in the face of the apparently unassailable conclusion of the accepted experts in the field, progress would have been inestimably slower in this area of knowledge.

Fraser taught by example: he ____ long-windedness in his own lectures and berated his students for any tendency toward circumlocution.

To the layman, a philosopher who attempts to elucidate a complex moral dilemma by reducing it to a simple yet apparently ridiculous test case seems rather to ____ the issue.

Grandfather liked us children to learn self-discipline, and, unlike many others of his generation, seldom ____ us even for those actions that we felt deserved censure.

The ____ effects of constant noise drove Natasha to seek refuge in a more salubrious spot until she recovered her mental equilibrium.

____ adherence to outdated political ideas and defunct sects characterized the last years of a man who had, surprisingly, been one of the most flexible thinkers of the 1920s.

The last candidate interviewed conducted herself with commendable ____ even when badgered with questions that had drawn unseemly outbursts from all the other interviewees.