Definition-in-Context questions constitute the final type that falls into the Foundations of Comprehension category. The task involved with such questions is always the same: define the word or phrase, specifically as it is used in the passage. You can expect to see about two of them on Test Day, as they tend to make up about 4 percent of all questions in the CARS section.
According to our research of released AAMC material, Definition-in-Context questions make up about 4 percent of the CARS section (about two questions).
This list of stems makes it clear that Definition-in-Context questions always feature a reference to a word, phrase, or an entire claim from the passage, the meaning of which you are tasked with identifying. Quotation marks and italics are common features used to call attention to the terms, but on occasion a Definition-in-Context question stem may lack these.
Although these questions ask about the meanings of words, a dictionary will not help you here, and in some cases it could even lead you astray. Trap answers in these questions are often the common definitions of the word, which are tempting Out of Scope choices that fail to match the context. That said, these questions tend to be relatively quick because they refer only to small portions of the text. Thus, you should generally decide to work on these questions as soon as you see them.
An author may imbue common words with a special meaning in the passage. Therefore, make sure to check how the author actually uses the word in a Definition-in-Context question, rather than looking for a dictionary definition of the term. Wrong answers in these questions are often accurate definitions of the term that do not match how the term was used in the passage.
Your Plan with a Definition-in-Context question will be to go to the text and surrounding context, if necessary, to see how the word or phrase is actually used in the passage. With this question type, the question stems will usually contain a paragraph reference, but use your Outline if necessary to locate the relevant sentence. If reading that sentence doesn’t give you enough to work with, then look at the one before and after. Then phrase a definition in your own words based on what you see. Author keywords may be especially helpful because answer choices with the wrong tone can immediately be ruled out.
In 1941, an exuberant nationalist wrote: “We must accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation…to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.” If forced to guess the identity of the writer, many US citizens would likely suspect a German jingoist advocating for Lebensraum. In actuality, the sentiment was expressed by one of America’s own: Henry Luce, the highly influential publisher of the magazines Life, Time, and Fortune. Luce sought to dub the 1900s the “American Century,” calling upon the nation to pursue global hegemony as it slipped from the grasp of warring Old World empires. As a forecast of world history, Luce’s pronouncement seems prescient—but is it justifiable as a normative stance?
Not all of Luce’s contemporaries bought into his exceptionalist creed. Only a year later, Henry Wallace, vice president under FDR, insisted that no country had the “right to exploit other nations” and that “military [and] economic imperialism” were invariably immoral. It is a foundational assumption in ethics that the wrongness of an act is independent of the particular identity of the actor—individuals who pay no heed to moral consistency are justly condemned as hypocrites. So why should it be any different for nation-states? In accord with this principle, Wallace proselytized for “the century of the common man,” for the furtherance of a “great revolution of the people,” and for bringing justice and prosperity to all persons irrespective of accidents of birth. Sadly, Wallace never had the chance to lead the United States in this cosmopolitan direction; prior to Roosevelt’s demise at the beginning of his fourth term, the vice presidency was handed to Harry Truman, a man whose narrow provincialism ensconced him firmly in Luce’s camp. And with Truman came the ghastly atomic eradication of two Japanese cities, the dangerous precedent set by military action without congressional approval in Korea, and a Cold War with the Soviet Union that brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction.