All was confusion around him; ______ he remained calm and unruffled.

Do you know Tim's brother? He is ______ than Tim.

减员增效

Thousands of people turned out into the streets to ______against the local authorities' decision to build a highway across the field.

The author took a ______ approach to the topiC. He presented both sides of the issue evenhandedly and did not let his own feelings intrude.

Those people who are ______ are most welcome to the politicians.

The increase in leisure time, the higher standard of living, the availability of cars to a wider range of the population and, perhaps, a broadening of personal horizons have all contributed to a drastic change in the summer week-end habits of the British public. Now, on most Saturdays in the months loosely called summer, it is possible to see family saloons loaded with picnics and crammed to bursting with several generations of pleasure-bent Smiths'. Like competitors in some grossly disorganized rally, they nose their way through the neat drab streets of council estates, converging on the main roads, then crawl as best they can out into the open country and towards the coast. Congestion and the frustration of wasting precious time at the receiving end of someone else's exhaust fumes gets the pursuit of enjoyment off to bad start; tempersbecome frayed. Children, traditionally the target for fathers'ill-humor, are singled out for special treatment. The past week's misdeeds are unearthed and magnified out of all reasonable proportion; mothers leap to their broods' defense and, before long, vows that never again will this outing be repeated are being hurled back and forth. Of course, by this time, the children have wisely extracted themselves from the argument and are quietly amusing themselves by looking at their irate elders or gaping at the unfamiliar sight of animals in fields, often so much stranger to them than the corresponding naked shapes they are wont to see in butchers' windows. Eventually, tempers partially restored, the sea is in sight. The paraphernalia of enjoyment is set up on teeming beach, sand mysteriously appears in every sandwich, pale industrial legs are exposed in self-conscious nakedness. The children drift away, quite capable of finding enough magic in this exciting, watery world to occupy them fully until they are gathered in again. Fathers and mothers, and quite possibly some members of a previous generation, settle back to receive the sun and dream away the tensions brought to a climax by the journey. Fathers eye with furtive lustfulness and mothers glare with disapproval and envy as the shapely matrons of tomorrow splash and play and race coquettishly around them, spraying water and sand and disturbing any hopes of peace. At length the shadows drop and chill in the air brings an end to the idyll. The lobster skin is painfully covered up and the day's debris half-heartedly collected. The family is rounded up and the brief dreams trodden into the sand along with the wasted paper.

You had the ______ situation in which Luxembourg had more listed public bathing beaches than the whole of the United Kingdom.

锁匠

What's the chance of ______ a general election this year?

Despite a tendency to be overtly ______, the poetry of the Middle Ages often sparks the imagination and provides lively entertainment, as well as pious sentiments.

most favored nations

常务委员会

The doctor assured Victor that his wife would certainly ______ although she had been unconscious for 48 hours.

We are on the ______ of a new era in European relations.

The Japanese dollar-buying makes traders eager to ______ dollars in fear of another government intervention.

Although specific concerns may determine the intent of a research project, its results are often ______.

Most of ______ archaeologists know about prehistoric cultures is based on studies of material remains.

本命年

The famous American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: 'Man is his own star, and the soul that can render an honest and a perfect man; (and) commands all light, all influence, all fate. ' (人是他自己的命运之星，是可臻于 诚实完美的人类的灵魂，他掌握者所有的光明、所有的影响、所有的命运) Yet while many people subscribe to the ideal of self independence, others point out that independence is not without limitations or drawbacks. In your view, is it beneficial for individuals to depend highly on themselves?