Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

What Does 
Obscure
Mean?
Start with 
obscure
. How is this word used?
The shows transform waitresses, hairdressers,
investment bankers, counselors, and teachers, to
name a few, from 
obscure
figures to household
names.
Even if you have no idea what 
obscure
means,
you can still learn about the word by how it is used, by
examining the words and ideas surrounding it. This is
called determining word meaning through 
context.
Like detectives looking for clues at a crime scene, we
must look at the passage for clues that will help us
define this word.
So, given the sentence we have here, what can we
tell about 
obscure
? Well, since the shows transform
waitresses, hairdressers, investment bankers, coun-
selors, and teachers from one position—
obscure
figures,
to another position—household names, that immedi-
ately tells us that an 
obscure
figure and a household
name are two different things.
Furthermore, we know from the sentence that
the people in question are involved in typical, everyday
jobs (waitresses, hairdressers, bankers, etc.) and that
from this position, they are transformed into house-
hold names, which means they achieve some level of
fame and notoriety. Now you can take a pretty good
guess at the meaning of
obscure.

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1.
Before they become household names, the
waitresses, hairdressers, investment bankers,
counselors, and teachers are
a.
famous and notorious.
b.
unknown and undistinguished.
c.
unique and distinctive.
The correct answer, of course, is 
b
. It certainly
can’t be 
a
, because we know that these people are not
yet famous. The reality shows will make them famous,
but until that happens, they remain 
obscure.
Answer 
c
doesn’t really make sense because we know from the
passage that these people are waitresses, hairdressers,
investment bankers, counselors, and teachers. Now,
these are all very respectable jobs, but they are fairly
common, so they wouldn’t be described as unique or
distinctive. Furthermore, we can tell that 
b
is the cor-
rect answer because we can substitute the word obscure
with the word 
unknown
or 
undistinguished
in the sen-
tence and both would make sense.