Match up Exercise July 12

Read the following paragraph and match the highlighted words with the meaning given in the following table.

As the Eurozone crisis rumbles on with lights going out in country after country, and the contagion looks set to spread, the question being asked is: how did a project born out of such passion and invested with so much idealism go so horribly wrong?

The short, if cynical, answer is: precisely because it was so achingly idealistic.

The unravelling of the grand European project illustrates the limits of an idea based solely on idealism. It is now widely acknowledged that the dream of creating “One Europe” united in a common pursuit of prosperity and progress (sharing not only a common market but a common currency) was simply too Utopian.

Even those who enthusiastically backed the project at the time now admit that it was inherently flawed given the vast difference in size, resources and levels of development of its member-states. It was crying out to fall apart at the first hint of crisis — as it eventually did — but at the time any criticism was attacked by its supporters as Europhobia.

Essentially, the idea was driven by Germany’s guilt over its Nazi past which still haunted its relations with the rest of Europe. Germany genuinely wanted to build a new relationship with its neighbours and to create legacy that would remind posterity not of what it once did to Europe but what it did for it.

           

	Word		Meaning
A	Rumbles	1	Disintegration, undoing
B	Contagion	2	All future generations
C	Cynical	3	To move with a deep, long, rolling sound
D	Achingly	4	a gift of personal property by will
E	Unravelling	5	expressing contempt or ridicule
F	Legacy	6	In an aching manner; sorely
G	Posterity	7	Any disease easily transmitted by contact