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unnerved?

gil12345

Senior Member
chinese
Hi,

A completion question from SAT really confuses me.

"The comedian had to struggle to maintain his outward calm, so-----was he by the -----audience."

A assured....interested
B becalmed...restless
C undisturbed..anxious
D gladdened..hostile
E unnerved...rude"

I find choice E seems right, but I am not sure. With all the choices, the sentence has a comma splice problem.
Can anyone help me?

Gil
Last edited:
None of them are correct. Have you copied the question accurately?
None of them are correct. Have you copied the question accurately?

Thank you, sir. I double check it and it is the corrct copy.
Then all of them are wrong. The word "the" must follow "by"

The best choice would be:

"The comedian had to struggle to maintain his outward calm, so unnerved was he by the hostile audience." but this is not a choice.

E unnerved...rude is not really idiomatic but is the closest to being acceptable.
Then all of them are wrong. The word "the" must follow "by"

The best choice would be:

"The comedian had to struggle to maintain his outward calm, so unnerved was he by the hostile audience." but this is not a choice.

E unnerved...rude is not really idiomatic but is the closest to being acceptable.

I still find the sentence grammatically incorrect. Is "so" a conjunction? or an adverb? As I see the second half part of the sentence is the same as "he was so unnerved by the rude audience." Then the sentence is a comma splice.
So is an adverb qualifying unnerved.

The sentence is better if you do not use the inversion: "So unnerved was he by the hostile audience that the comedian had to struggle to maintain his outward calm."
or, clearer yet:

"The comedian was so unnerved by the hostile audience that he had to struggle to maintain his outward calm."
"The comedian had to struggle to maintain his outward calm, so unnerved was he by rude audience," is a perfectly normal sentence. That grammatical structure is not ESL 101, but I can't think of anything objectionable or "unidiomatic" about it.
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