ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by O negative,

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the glass-half-empty blood type.

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Which of these words is closest in meaning to nullify?

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And here are the potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right. Well, the word "nullify"

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means to terminate or cancel something,

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like when you nullify one of those accidental

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Vegas marriages. [ chuckles ] It's not a good thing.

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All right, well, let's start wtih A - affirm,

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which means to maintain something as true.

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Well, that couldn't be more wrong.

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Then there's C - humanize,

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which means to refine or make more human.

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Like, think about Frankenstein.

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Villains are often said to be humanized

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when you can understand their motives,

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but that doesn't cancel out whatever wrong they did in the first place.

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Take a look at B - invalidate

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and D - evaporate.

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Well, evaporate can mean to disappear or vanish,

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which seems pretty close here, but the word

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invalidate literally means

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to make something invalid.

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Now that's the same thing as nullify.

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So the correct answer here is B - invalidate.

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The favorite insult of scientists everywhere.

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[ snorting laugh ]

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