Ch blank.) Use each word once.
Did you hear that K-Mart sold sweaters with baby snakes inside? The story,
of course, was untrue, but it was not easy to squelch°.
How do such unrealistic rumors get started? Sometimes they are
_(e)d. In the case of the K-Mart rumor, the story
(1)
was actually fraudulentº; someone had deliberately made it up and spread
it to discredit the store. Often, though, a rumor starts with an innocent
misinterpretation. For instance, when a magazine article drew an analogyº
between a worm farm turning out bait and McDonald's turning out hamburgers,
some readers (2)
(e)d this to mean that McDonald's
was grinding up worms in its burgers-and the ridiculous story spread.
Rumors about individuals can start when someone makes a(n)
statement or (4)_
O Todd Taulman Photography/shutterstock.com
(3).
someone else, out of rancor or jealousy: "Josie got an A because the professor is friends with her parents,"
or "Al isn't in class today he left town because he knew his arrest for stealing a copy of the final exam
__."Even an innuendo-something that's merely hinted at-can start
was (5)
a rumor that can do permanent harm to someone's reputation: “Isn't Josie lucky that her parents are
such good friends with the professor?" No story is too gruesome to make the rounds, not even the
(6)
tale of the girl whose beehive hairdo housed a black widow spider, which
eventually burrowed into her brain and killed her.
Once a rumor gets started, people who hear it are sometimes in a (7)_
Even
if there's nothing to support the rumor, they may be afraid to ignore it. And so there is an explosion of
rumors, spreading fear, damaging reputations, and turning calm situations into (8)_
ones. To stop or forestallº rumors, one thing is probably of (9).
importance:
before accepting any story, be sure the facts (10)_
it.