Far from being ______ to the negotiations, the mediator accelerated them, helping both sides reach an agreement in days rather than months.
- Aa catalyst
- Ba hindrance
- Can observer
- Da condition
- Ean alternative
Text completion: far from demands an antonym
Try it before you scroll. Two minutes on the clock, then commit to an answer.
Correct answer: B
“Far from being X, she did Y” means X must be the opposite of Y. The mediator accelerated the talks, so the blank needs something that means the reverse of speeding things up: slowing them down or blocking them. The blank also takes the preposition “to,” so the answer must fit grammatically before “to the negotiations.”
- (B) a hindrance means an obstacle, something that slows progress. “A hindrance to the negotiations” is idiomatic, and it is the precise opposite of accelerating them. Correct.
- (A) a catalyst means something that speeds a process up, which is what she actually was, not what she was “far from being.”
- (C) an observer is neutral, not the opposite of accelerating, and “an observer to the negotiations” is awkward beside the idiom “an observer of.”
- (D) a condition is a prerequisite, again not opposed to acceleration.
- (E) an alternative suggests a replacement option, which has no contrast with speeding the process.
Two checks are running here: meaning (opposite of accelerate) and idiom (noun + to). A hindrance passes both. On hard text completions, the wrong answers usually fail one check while passing the other, so verify each choice against every constraint the sentence gives you.