<p>In scenarios reminiscent of the old science fiction movie fantastic voyage, medical researchers _______ the body with miniature robots sent into the bloodstream</p>
<p>b) hope to explore
d) have hopes to explore</p>
<p>is there any reason that it's b and not d other than the fact that it's shorter?</p>
<p>the idiom absorbed...
is "absorbed in"
does "absorbed by" also work?</p>
<p>“Hope” as a noun in this case should be followed by “of”: You have hopes of winning, for example. “Hope” as a VERB can be followed by “to”: You hope to win. So D is wrong not because it is wordy but because it is grammatically incorrect. You cannot say you have hopes to win, but you can say you hope to win.
“X is absorbed in Y” means that X is interested/engaged in Y. “X was absorbed by Y” means that Y absorbed X, which can mean a variety of things–e.g., a sponge absorbed water, so water was absorbed by the sponge, or a person learned or absorbed a lesson. “Absorb” has many different definitions. Learning to put together words is not about memorizing phrases and “idioms.” It’s about knowing the definitions of words and using prepositions like in and by according to what you are trying to say.</p>
<p>i see.</p>
<p>thanks. often i feel like i dont see an answer, but when i find out what the answer is, i realize that it is actually very simple.</p>
<p>hopes of exploring</p>
<p>and i always thought the way people knew their idioms was by rote memorization, not by logic, in a sense. guess i was wrong</p>