<p>mirriam-webster definitions:
caustic: “marked by incisive sarcasm”
Examples:
She wrote a caustic report about the decisions that led to the crisis.
His [Roosevelt’s] caustic cousin, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, called him a sissy and a mama’s boy. —Garry Wills, Atlantic, April 1994</p>
<p>Vehement: “deeply felt <a vehement=”" suspicion=“”> (2) : forcibly expressed <vehement denunciations=“”>"
Examples (these are all examples including the ones from other meanings of the word):
He issued a vehement denial of the accusation.
The proposal has faced vehement opposition from many teachers.
She was vehement about the need for new safety measures.
Cranes rise above the old rooftops, adding new office towers and new condominiums and new malls to a city where Jonathan Swift once issued his vehement bulletins.</vehement></a></p><a vehement=“” suspicion=“”>
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<p>haha the words that people select from the thesaurus list make it incredibly obvious which answer they picked (i.e the one they HOPE is right, not the one they THINK is right).</p>
<p>@notanengineer according to the Merriam Webster dictionary these are the only words even close to fitting the only other definitions for caustic are: “capable of destroying or eating away by chemical action” or “relating to or being the surface or curve of a caustic” and for vehement the only other definitions are: “intensely emotional” or “bitterly antagonistic”</p>
<p>Okay, I don’t know what it was. All I know is that I put resigned. Hahha.
But what is this arguing going to do? You’ve already bubbled in your answer, and it’s gone now. Finding out you were right gives you what… 20 more points? Finding out you were wrong does what… makes you lose 20 points? What’s done is done. Stop getting mad about it.</p>
<p>@ almost there
I was. The article mentioned nuclear waste which can burn through/corrode most substances so the answer must obviously be caustic, right? :)</p>
<p>Oh, resigned is what I must have thought apathetic was.</p>
<p>Well, there’s not really any point in discussing any of them other than to predict your score before it comes. People (myself included) get a bit caught up in thinking that if they can argue for one answer successfully, that makes the answer correct. This is a case in that. There have been tons of people to come on (even after the passage was found) to say that vehement was obviously correct. But there is a very compelling, if not more compelling, case for caustic, now that we’ve seen the passage.</p>
<p>And when we’re trying to find the possible answer, use the dictionary with the largest variety of definitions, not narrowest. Excluding both words doesn’t help us since, as far as we can remember, it wasn’t one of the other 3 choices.</p>
<p>The caustic ones that I would cherry-pick, having chose caustic, are: sarcastic, satiric, smart-mouthed. Maybe biting.</p>
<p>I won’t pretend like I feel the vehement ones fit ;)</p>
