But you are talking about our GRE test for permitting to select more than one answer choices when you do have a question A through F ??

This is what do you mean ??

I think the answers are "Sclerotic" and "Ossified"

Sclerotic means hardened. And so does ossified.
Since the first part of the sentence states that the organization was versatile before, we must be looking for a word which carries a somewhat opposite meaning. Sclerotic and Ossified fit perfectly

I suppose the OA has to be changed to C, F and not C, E

I don't understand why sclerotic & compromised. Wouldn't the correct pair be "sclerotic & ossified" ?

A.antedated=precede in time; come before (something) in date
B.pilloried=attack or ridicule publicly
C.sclerotic=becoming rigid and unresponsive; losing the ability to adapt.
D.invigorated=gave strength or energy to
E.compromised=settle a dispute by mutual concession;expediently accept standards that are lower than is desirable.
F.ossified=turn into bone or bony tissue;cease developing; stagnate
so,answer would be (C,F).

Should be C and F, I think OP made a mistake while giving the answers..

Yes, the OA should be C and F as both are opposite of versatile and similar to unresponsive..

Edited the OA

This is a perfect example of the type of a GRE "Vocabulary" question that can be approached with process of elimination.

I bet that many people did not know both "ossified" and "sclerotic." I have worked with the GRE, GMAT and LSAT for a dozen years and I have been exposed to a lot of vocabulary and while I knew "ossified" I did not immediately recognize "sclerotic". I now understand that is the same root word as the disease "multiple sclerosis." So I do see that it is rigid and unresponsive and so it fits this sentence perfectly alongside "ossified."

But we can still get this question right even without knowing both of these challenge words. The key is to focus on the words that we do know. I would say that in order of difficulty the easiest vocab here is "compromised" followed by "invigorated" then perhaps "antedated" and finally "pilloried."

As chetan2u has indicated we are looking for the opposite of versatile and a synonym for unresponsive.

Clearly "compromised" and "invigorated" do not fit this description. What about antedated? If you have worked with prefixes you might notice that "ante" is before, as in the U.S. "antebellum" means before the war (in this case it is the U.S. Civil War they are speaking of - so the Antebellum period is before 1860). "Antedated" does not seem to have any relationship to being responsive or not.

So you are down to three words: ossified, sclerotic, and pilloried. At this point you want to eliminate one of the three. If you can at least get a sense that pilloried is a situation where something is DONE TO something else then you could perhaps eliminate this one. In other words pilloried is not a condition. It is not the condition of being responsive or unresponsive it is a situation where something has been done to you - in this case attacked: "pilloried" means attacked, criticized, or ridiculed.

Process of Elimination can be a powerful tool on GRE "Vocab" questions. And sometimes you do not even need to know the exact definition of the words to eliminate them. It may be enough to simply know whether something is positive or negative or whether it is passive or active.

Think of this less as pure Vocab and more as GRE Critical Reasoning. The most important thing is to understand the sentence and to know what needs to go in the blank. Then you can deal with the answer choices.

Thank you VeritasPrepDavid.

Regards

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