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This Question was asked to me by my teacher. The sentence above is from the story " A Holiday task". Here I was asked to give the answer contextualizing the whole paragraph. The paragraph-"I tried that. I skimmed through the list of the House of Lords in 'Whitaker,' but a mere printed string of names conveys awfully little to one, you know. If you were an army officer and had lost your identity you might pore over the Army List for months without finding out who your were. I'm going on another tack; I'm trying to find out by various little tests who I am not — that will narrow the range of uncertainty down a bit. You may have noticed, for instance, that I'm lunching principally off lobster Newburg."

The answer I had chosen was find but I was told the correct answer is removed.The reasoning that I was given was that she was eliminating names from the list while going through it. However I do not think that is the case. Remove (when you are using it as a synonym of skim) can only be used in the context that you are removing a substance from a liquid. Skim: remove (a substance) from the surface of a liquid. Skim:an act of reading something quickly or superficially. Therefore remove can't be used as given in the reasoning. Find should be more appropriate as it fits the context better.

I did bring up these points however my classmates and teacher kept insisting on it being remove. I have gotten a bit confused so I would appreciate if you could help me.

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The question you were posed is more suited to a ‘make your case’ short answer than to a multiple-choice selection.

The key term in the question is “contextualizing”, and the main idea in the text is that the character was unable to find something (who they were) by a positive match, so tried a process of elimination.

The “remove” answer picks up this idea of elimination whereas “find” could work either way. On one level, it picks up the overall intent (finding their identity) but on another, it fails to address the failed positive-match approach.

Nevertheless, both terms (all four, for that matter) miss the point. The skimming isn’t explained by any of the choices. Skimming is related to the failed approach, so it definitely isn’t elimination. It didn’t result in finding anything, so that’s out. One could argue that he tried, but that’s too vague to serve as the required passage summary, and sort has nothing to do with the passage except in the sense of sorting out their identity.

You might get closer to the intent of the passage with something like “first attempt” as a description of the relevance of skim in the context you supplied.

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None of the choices is right.

Here skim means to read, or sort-of-read, quickly.

If you replace "skim" in the sentence with any of the four words, you get nonsense.

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  • That may be so, however could you please clarify which word would be more appropriate in the specific context?
    – Human being
    Commented Sep 10, 2020 at 4:10
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    Which is most appropriate for fixing a flat tire? A fish, a piano, a leaf, or a sock??? Skim doesn’t remotely mean find, remove, wholesome or behind.
    – Jim
    Commented Sep 10, 2020 at 4:20
  • @Jim Not really, remove be a synonym of skim however not in the given context and find isn't completely correct either, look through would be more appropriate. The question asks the closest word to skim according to the context. Not exactly what it means otherwise neither of those words could be correct as skim doesn't mean only remove or find However I only have to choose from one of the options given to me.
    – Human being
    Commented Sep 10, 2020 at 4:45
  • @Humanbeing Unfortunately you have been set an impossible task. You have been asked to pick from a list of words none of which is a synonym for 'skim' in this context. 'Skim' can be said to mean remove but only in the sense of removing something from the surface of a liquid, "skimming the froth off a coffee" for instance.
    – BoldBen
    Commented Sep 11, 2020 at 3:08
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    Choosing the better synonym for "skim" as used here between "find" and remove" (or the other two answers) is akin to choosing between "blue" and "green" or between 15 and 22. You and your teacher can make up reasons why one answer is a better synonym, but it's a ridiculous exercise. Of course if you ignore the sentence and the paragraph and the instruction to contextualize, and you just read the question as which of these is the best synonym for "skim", then the answer is remove. But "skim" doesn't mean anything like remove (or find) in this sentence, paragraph, and context.
    – David S
    Commented Sep 11, 2020 at 5:24
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Either the answers don't match the question well or this isn't a good question for these answers.

The best answer is probably "try" because it is describing how the speaker tried and failed to read something. A better substitution would be to replace "skimmed through" with "tried and failed to read carefully". In that sense, the second sentence of your quote is repeating and elaborating on the first sentence of your quote.

The question is asking for a one-word answer, but none of those answers are that word.

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