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Source (One of many)

To say the actors were (i)______ their director is an understatement: a director who is visibly bored by his cast and their performances is hard to (ii)______.

The choices for (i) are:

A. disappointed in
B. accepting of
C. motivated by

The choices for (ii) are:

D. lambast
E. displease
F. suffer

There are three "semi-official" answers (not given by ETS) for this problem: AF, BF, BE. Any of them makes partial sense.

I originally chose AF. Since "understatement" means to say something less important than it really is, (ii) is supposed to be severer than (i).

I wonder how native speakers of English will approach this problem.

Andrew T.
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No One
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  • It's a good question, but I think you should add your opinion too. – Cardinal Jun 19 '17 at 17:53
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    I agree with @Cardinal – this is an interesting question, but it would be better if you explained why you think it's "controversial." Also, what do you mean by "semi-official answers"? Are those answer choices in the book, and only one of them is correct? Or are those three answers that people are regarding as ALL correct? – J.R. Jun 19 '17 at 18:03
  • Sorry, but actually I have trouble to explain it in English~~~~I am afraid I need to know some advanced English about grammar and rhetoric to fully express my opinion about this. But let me try... Actually some random places on the Internet. I don't know whether this is really a question in the real test or a question made up by people who are not in ETS. – No One Jun 19 '17 at 18:07
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    Asking how native speakers approach the problem is a great question! Sometimes this can provide some good insight to help learn English—by learning how the natives see it. – Ben Kovitz Jun 19 '17 at 18:44
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    To be clear -- there are bad and ambiguous test questions out there, but this isn't one of them: the answer to this question is certainly AF and the unofficial guide that suggests other answers is simply wrong. – hunter Jun 19 '17 at 23:24
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    @hunter. It most certainly is one of them. – Mars Jun 21 '17 at 04:02
  • For what dialect or vocabulary is this question meant to gauge your fluency, exactly? Anyway, none of the first three choices seems consistent with the second sentence. ‘unhappy with’, ‘uncomfortable with’, ‘berated by’, or even ‘at odds with’ work better. – can-ned_food Jun 21 '17 at 05:37
  • 'Visibly bored' - = uninterested or disinterested? With thousands of better choices for questions in a test such as this, it makes me wonder why questions such as this ever make it onto the paper. Someone trying to be really clever, or someone without a proper grasp of their job? Either way, tenuous at best! – Tim Jun 21 '17 at 07:20
  • @hunter: No combination of choices will yield a well-written sentence. Why would the fact that it is generally difficult to suffer bored directors cause the actors to be disappointed in this particular director? I think A. Simmons nails it when he suggests that the only sensible causal relation between the general and specific would be that because bored directors are generally insufferable, the actors wanted to avoid having their (particular) director enter that category. – supercat Jun 21 '17 at 15:04

7 Answers7

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If you focus on hard to you'll see that only suffer makes sense for blank (ii). Is it hard to displease a director who is visibly bored by his cast? No. It is hard to lambaste such a director? No.

And the colon indicates that the second clause flows from and is consonant with the first. The only phrase there which creates a clause that is consonant with the second one is disappointed in.

TimR
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    You could argue that if the director is "visibly bored with his cast" then it is impossible for them to "displease" him/her, since he/she is taking no interest in them whatever they do. But as a native British English speaker, I would say the most obviously "correct" answer is AF. – alephzero Jun 19 '17 at 19:20
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    @alephzero: Isn't boredom a kind of displeasure? Would you be happy to read A Treatise on Boredom? – TimR Jun 19 '17 at 19:44
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    @Cardinal: The word suffer there means "to put up with, to tolerate". That is the only meaning available following hard. The syntax demands a transitive verb there. – TimR Jun 19 '17 at 20:05
  • @Tᴚoɯɐuo Oh dear, I see. I just read @ Peter's answer. I didn't know that. – Cardinal Jun 19 '17 at 20:06
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    @Cardinal - It's a rather old-fashioned use of the word, and it leads me to believe this test either wasn't created by native speakers, or else it's intended to test for lesser-known meanings of common words. – J.R. Jun 19 '17 at 20:07
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    @Cardinal: it is related to the adjective insufferable. Compare the phrase He does not suffer fools gladly. – TimR Jun 19 '17 at 20:08
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    @J.R. Remember that the GRE is intended to be a graduate-level admissions exam. – chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic- Jun 19 '17 at 20:30
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    Yes, what @chrylis said—this is a challenging question for an English learner, but it's not intended for English learners. It's intended for university seniors or graduates who are applying for admission to (mostly American) graduate programs in everything from engineering to creative writing to philosophy, so some questions certainly are intended to test more advanced/obscure vocabulary (perhaps less so now than on older versions of the test). – 1006a Jun 19 '17 at 23:05
  • @J.R. "Hard to suffer (through)" is a phrase I'd expect all high-school level native speakers to be familiar with. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Jun 20 '17 at 03:08
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    @BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft Except that's not what "suffer" means here--it means "tolerate" or "permit". – chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic- Jun 20 '17 at 06:58
  • @DannyP - Sure, I’m familiar with “hard to suffer through” – but “a director is hard to suffer through” still would strike me as odd. “Working for such a director is hard to suffer through” would be okay – although it’s a moot point anyway, for the reason that chrylis mentions. – J.R. Jun 20 '17 at 10:20
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    "suffer through" isn't one of the choices listed. You might suffer through the play, or even suffer through the directing of the play, but you cannot suffer through the director. That which is suffered through must have DURATION. – TimR Jun 20 '17 at 10:26
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To say the actors were disappointed in their director is an understatement: a director who is visibly bored by his cast and their performances is hard to suffer.

Disappointed in is the only possibility for the first due to the use of understatement.

Suffer is used less often than its synonym tolerate.

The other choices don't really make sense.

Peter
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    B can make sense if you view the rest as a contrast, eg. the actors are more than accepting of their current director, because their previous director was insufferable. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Jun 20 '17 at 03:10
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    @BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft That's a rather... creative way of interpreting the sentence. There's really no reason to think that each instance of "director" refers to a different person, especially when they're in the same sentence separated by only a colon. Yes, it's possible for B to make sense if there was very specific additional context, but as the text stands by itself, B really doesn't fit. – Nuclear Hoagie Jun 20 '17 at 12:15
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    @NuclearWang: I didn't say B is a better answer than A; I'm just saying there is a context in which a native speaker might reasonably write this sentence. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Jun 20 '17 at 16:35
  • @BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft: My first inclination on reading the sentence was that actors who are willing to tolerate a director who was visibly bored would must willing to tolerate ("accept") anything. IMHO, "accepting of" generally implies merely willingness to tolerate the referent's reasonable actions, and reasonable directors should not be difficult to suffer. Saying the actors were willing to tolerate the reasonable actions of a director who was acting grossly unreasonably would thus be an understatement. – supercat Jun 21 '17 at 15:12
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To say the actors were (i)______ their director is an understatement: a director who is visibly bored by his cast and their performances is hard to (ii)______.

I like the way Collins describes understatement:

If you say that a statement is an understatement, you mean that it does not fully express the extent to which something is true : To say I'm disappointed is an understatement.
[emphasis added]

So, if the word that goes with (i) is negative, it means the situation was even worse than described; if the word is positive, it means the situation was even better.

Therefore, if we say:

To say the actors were disappointed in their director is an understatement...

that would mean the actors resented and loathed the director.

However, if we say:

To say the actors were accepting of their director is an understatement...

that would mean the actors loved and admired their director.

Finally if we say:

To say the actors were motivated by their director is an understatement...

that would mean the actors always wanted to give 110% and put on the best performance possible.

At this point, we have one answer that is negative (choice A) and two that are positive (choices B and C).

Now we need to examine the second part of the sentence:

a director who is visibly bored by his cast and their performances is hard to (ii)______.

If someone is hard to lambast, that would mean they are above criticism. If (ii) were lambast, then (i) must be B or C, because someone who is hard to lambast is above reproach.

If someone is hard to displease, that means they are easy to please. If someone is easy to please, they are generally well-liked but they probably don't inspire a high degree of motivation. So the only answer I can see going with (ii) being displease is (i) B – accepting of.

That leaves the final option, hard to suffer. I have the most problem with this one, because the phrase "hard to suffer" simply isn't idiomatic English. (When I Googled "hard to suffer" in quotes, only 10 hits came back, and one of them was a link to this ELL question.) Maybe that's because the writers of this practice exam aren't native speakers.

Had the final option been hard to work for, I would have paired that with A:

To say the actors were disappointed in their director is an understatement: a director who is visibly bored by his cast and their performances is hard to work for.

My best guess is that this is meaning that is intended. After all, even though looking visibly bored with the cast might conceivably be a motivator (through some kind of reverse psychology), I'm guessing that the director's boredom is something that demotivates rather than motivates the actors.

In conclusion, I think AF is the best answer out of those provided, although I still find "hard to suffer" problematic. Thus, I agree with you: the question is indeed "controversial" and not easy to answer.

ColleenV
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J.R.
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    As a native speaker myself (American), "hard to suffer" doesn't sound "wrong" to my ears, just a little old-fashioned. I don't find it any less idiomatic than the other two "hard" + infinitive clause constructions. And it actually returns more Google results than "hard to lambast", if that's your criterion. – MJ713 Jun 19 '17 at 22:10
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    @MJ713 - Those are all good points and I agree. However, it's also worth noting that "lambast" in particular is not a very common word. – J.R. Jun 19 '17 at 22:15
  • But the answer makes it sound like "hard to suffer" is significantly less idiomatic than the other two phrases. Unless you're arguing from a comparative standpoint, i.e. "hard to suffer" sounds unnatural because you hear the word "suffer" so often outside of that phrase. – MJ713 Jun 19 '17 at 22:36
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    @MJ713 - The OP asked for us to explain "how native speakers of English will approach this problem." I merely was pointing out that, upon initial read, I thought the expression sounded a little odd, even though I'm a native speaker. I think the way you described it – old-fashioned – is quite apt. It's not a phrase I'm likely to hear or use in day-to-day conversation. So, when I said "problematic," I didn't mean from a grammatical perspective, I was just acknowledging that I can understand how this might be challenging for a learner. – J.R. Jun 19 '17 at 22:51
  • Generally a good answer, and the most complete one that anyone has given. My only (very slight) criticism is that, to me, it is clear that a "director who is visibly bored by his cast" is a bad thing, therefore AF is the only acceptable answer. – AndyT Jun 20 '17 at 11:19
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    @AndyT - I guess my reasoning was, “If a cast is performing poorly, and the director’s visible boredom motivates them to perform better...” but I think you’re right – that’s probably too much of a stretch. – J.R. Jun 20 '17 at 11:43
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    I think the issue with "hard to suffer" might be that hard used this way is generally a different register than suffer, and we also most often use suffer in the negative. I think most English users (at the level of GRE-prep) should have at least a background awareness of the biblically-inspired expression not suffer fools gladly, which feels quite formal. As a result, difficult to suffer feels a bit more natural than hard to suffer and something like not easy to suffer or not easily suffered more natural yet. But those expressions are probably too formal for the sentence. – 1006a Jun 20 '17 at 13:51
  • Hard to displease does not imply easy to please. If X is oblivious to what Y is doing and it is hard for Y to get X's attention, X will be hard to please but also hard to displease. – supercat Jun 20 '17 at 16:37
  • @1006a - I don't see how "difficult to suffer" is any more a usage in the negative than "hard to suffer". I also disagree that "suffer" is mostly used in the negative - "I had to suffer through tedious Latin lessons at school" sounds perfectly natural to me. – AndyT Jun 21 '17 at 11:22
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    @AndyT It's not—the three examples are intended to be increasingly similar to the "not suffer fools gladly" construction. And suffer through** is a different usage than the transitive form used here. – 1006a Jun 21 '17 at 18:11
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I agree with the other commenters that AF makes the most sense of all the options given. However, I would contend that the second-most reasonable answer is actually CF.

As pointed out by other answers, the first part of the CF sentence means that the actors were always very motivated by this director. The second part states that it is hard to tolerate a bored and uninterested director.

Combined, CF paints a picture of a scenario in which a cast notices their director is uninterested with the performance, and finds this a strong motivational factor to improve their performances since the current situation is difficult to tolerate.

A Simmons
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    The more I think about it, the more I would upvote CF. Drop all of the fluff and rewrite the sentence as the causal: It's hard to suffer a bored director so the actors were ____. Written this way, "motivated" is much stronger than "disappointed". – claytond Jun 20 '17 at 22:35
  • @claytond: For "disappointed" to really make sense, the second clause should have said that the actors' director was visibly bored. Instead, the second clause specifies that directors in general are hard to tolerate when they show boredom. – supercat Jun 21 '17 at 14:51
  • That doesn't work with this particular (somewhat archaic) usage of suffer, which means something like put up with or tolerate with a side-helping of permit/allow. That is, this kind of suffering a director is not the type where someone who didn't want to do it would change their own behavior; rather, it is the kind where the actors would quit working for the director altogether (or better yet, get the director fired). – 1006a Jun 21 '17 at 18:20
  • @supercat: I interpret the juxtaposition of the two statements as indicating that their director is characterized by the second part (i.e. boredom). The contorted sentence structure is just the test for fluency. This would allow for disappointment (but I find it less appropriate). – claytond Jun 22 '17 at 16:01
  • @claytond: If the purpose was to say that the actors were disappointed in their director's apathetic behavior, why not say so directly? Why talk about apathetic directors in general? In many cases, the best way to glean the intended meaning of bad writing is to try to figure out what authors might have been trying to say that would cause them to use the sentence structure they chose. And the most logical reason I can see for a general vs specific statement would be to recognize a potential condition, rather than an actual one. – supercat Jun 22 '17 at 16:09
  • @1006a: It's not the type that would motivate someone who was suffering from it to change their behavior, but that doesn't mean that it's not a type which people could change behavior to avoid. The use of general rather than specific construct for the second half of the sentence implies that it doesn't describe how director currently is, but rather how the insufferable the director could be if the actors don't keep his interest. – supercat Jun 22 '17 at 16:19
  • @supercat: If the sentence were part of a novel or a news article, I agree that the complexity would exist for specific, semantic reasons. When included in a standardized test, however, my first assumption is that complexity is designed to calibrate (i.e. increase) question difficulty. It's been quite a while since I took the GRE, but some of the math questions were equally tortuous... not because you'd expect to face a similar problem in real life, but to separate the great from the exceptional. – claytond Jun 23 '17 at 15:53
  • @claytond: It's fine to test someone's ability to parse a sentence which is structured unusually because it describes something unusual. I'm not sure what is supposed to be measured by asking people to parse nonsense. – supercat Jun 23 '17 at 16:27
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There are several other answers already, and they are correct, but since you are a non-native looking for what amounts to native opinion, I think it might be somewhat valuable to hear from several natives rather than just a few.

So, I will also agree that AF is correct.

The director is visibly bored, and the actors are disappointed in this fact. This makes the most sense.

Let me be more precise, since this may be part of your question. Due to the understatement, the statement is weaker than the truth. This implies the truth is stronger than the statement. So, they are MORE THAN disappointed. This is still best compared to MORE THAN accepting or MORE THAN motivated.

Meanwhile, "suffer" in this case means "tolerate." It isn't a very common usage, and may even be slightly archaic, but it still can be found sometimes.

Some phrases that come to mind are "doesn't suffer a fool gladly" or "don't suffer a witch to live." The first of these refers to a a teacher, boss, or other person of authority who is intolerant of such things. The second is a bible quote and suggests that a witch should not be tolerated (that is, should be executed).

RCM
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  • That makes sense; I yet think the question is poorly formulated. Would the actors be “disappointed in” their director, or ‘disappointed by’ the director's response? Was their expectation that their performances would be received well, or that this specific director would be able to correctly assess their performance? The question implies that the actors know their performance is good, and do not approve of their director's failure to recognize that fact — hmm, actually, maybe it isn't that far off … – can-ned_food Jun 21 '17 at 05:48
  • An actor might be satisfied with a director whose manner during rehearsal was hard to bear if the final result was that they performed well, and might be disappointed with a director whose manner during rehearsal was pleasant if the final performance went poorly. The causal relationship with AF seems weaker than with CF [it's important to keep the director from becoming bored and thus insufferable] or BF [actors who were willing to tolerate visible boredom from a director would have been willing to tolerate/"accept" anything from him]. – supercat Jun 21 '17 at 15:55
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To say the actors were accepting of their director is an understatement: a director who is visibly bored by his cast and their performances is hard to suffer.

Suffer means to continue to do something despite hardship.

Since the actors did this, they were accepting of their director. Since it was something they suffered through, it required extra effort to survive the effort, therefore merely saying "accepting of" is an understatement.

Disappointed in would be more appropriate if the sentence was talking about some effect or consequence after the acting/performance was completed and exhibited. We don't know how well the performance went yet from this sentence alone. The sentence might be talking about a completed yet unreleased performance.

LawrenceC
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  • So you're arguing that the intended meaning of the sentence is "It is an understatement to say the actors did X, because X is difficult to do"? I disagree. If X is difficult to do, that would lead the actors to do it less strongly, which is at odds with the concept of understatement. (How can the words be weaker than what they describe, if what they describe is already weak?) – MJ713 Jun 19 '17 at 21:53
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    To me, the phrase "To say the actors were accepting of their director is an understatement" makes it sound like the actors were eagerly welcoming of the director's behavior. That's the opposite of the meaning that would fit here. – Tanner Swett Jun 19 '17 at 23:34
  • I don't think 'accepting of' necessarily implies that the actors were eagerly welcoming the behaviour. I think you can also read 'accepting of' to mean that the actors were very accomodating despite the director's visible boredom. Therefore the interpretation here is that saying the actors were merely 'accepting of' is an understatement, because it took a lot of effort for them to suffer his behaviour with a positive attitude. – Lunakshc Jun 20 '17 at 11:20
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    @Lunakshc: I see what you mean - but the problem is that "accepting of" implies that the acceptance is willing, not that it's an effort - so saying that them being "accepting of" was an "understatement" would mean that they were very willing to accept, not that they had to make a huge effort to do so. – psmears Jun 20 '17 at 16:32
  • @psmears: There are different kinds of willingness and acceptance. If X is accepting of Y, that would generally imply that X is willing accept anything Y does, within reason. A willingness by X to accept unreasonable actions by Y would go beyond that--hence "understatement". – supercat Jun 21 '17 at 14:56
  • @supercat: I do understand - but to my mind that interpretation requires something extra that's not present in the original question (eg a "...but they rallied round him nonetheless"). I guess it depends what one's aim is - if it's to pick the answer the examiners most likely wanted, I'd advise ruling out that interpretation; if the intent is to point out how these questions are always somewhat arbitrary then you are absolutely right :-) – psmears Jun 23 '17 at 07:40
  • @psmears: Applying the "specific;general" construct to some other situations, it does sometimes work, but "disappointed" still feels off to my ear. Perhaps the problem is that an actor's disappointment with a director would relate more to the quality of the resulting performance than with the pleasantness of rehearsals. If the actors were "disgusted" with the director, or if visible boredom from a director makes it hard for actors to "excel", I think those would yield a better causal relationship. – supercat Jun 23 '17 at 14:45
  • @supercat: Yeah, I'm sure you can improve on the example, for sure. But I think it's OK for an actor (or indeed anyone) to feel disappointed in someone who's clearly not putting any effort in. (I also think "disappointed in" rather than "disappointed with" makes it more likely - to me, the former makes it sound like the disappointment is more in the person of the director, rather than at the outcome, but that might be just me...) – psmears Jun 23 '17 at 15:35
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BF. To be "accepting of" the Director's bad behavior means essentially the same as to "suffer" his bad behavior. The alternative answer could be that they were "disappointed in" his bad behavior, but there is no corrolary to that in the second set of choices. I.e., it is clear that it would not be hard for the Actors to "lambast" (criticize) his behavior, and "hard to displease" is exactly the opposite of the meaning that would be required to describe his behavior, since the sentence insinuates that he is already displeased. So, a more appropriate answer might say that he is "hard to please". Answer 'A' doesn't fit either, because the Director's behavior as described makes it plain that he believes they are not motivated at all, much less highly motivated as the phrase "is an understatement" insinuates.

Don
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    You've missed "hard to". – TimR Jun 19 '17 at 18:27
  • By answer 'A' (disappointed in), do you mean answer 'C' (motivated by)? Also, is there something wrong with "disappointed in" and "suffer" (AF)? – Tanner Swett Jun 19 '17 at 23:39
  • Someone who is bored will often be simultaneously hard to please but hard to displease. If someone was bored before you showed up, the only way to displease that person would be to make that person's displeasure worse than it already was. – supercat Jun 21 '17 at 14:59