From William Hazlitt's essay *On the Ignorance of the Learned* (1821). Select the word that fits the blank. "Can we wonder at the languor and ______ which is thus produced by a life of learned sloth and ignorance; by poring over lines and syllables that excite little more idea or interest than if they were the characters of an unknown tongue, till the eye closes on vacancy, and the book drops from the feeble hand!"

The blank is paired with *languor* by *and*. Hazlitt's rhetorical doubling typically pairs near-synonyms, and the sentence's whole movement — sloth, ignorance, the eye closing, the book dropping — points to a state of *exhausted listlessness*. *Lassitude* (weariness, loss of energy) is the precise companion to *languor*. The two words together name the same condition in two registers, intensifying Hazlitt's verdict on the learned. - "Ambition" and "industry" name the *opposite* state — energetic striving. - "Mirth" is irrelevant to the tone of fatigue Hazlitt is building. *Languor / lassitude* is exactly the doubled-near-synonym pattern GRE Verbal trains; recognising it lets you collapse the search to *which option means weariness*.