Language Standards: Figurative Language and Word Relationships (CCSS.L.9-10.5) Practice Test

The council calls our library a resource; I call it a lung. You can survive on shallow breaths—'maintain,' 'patch,' 'tinker'—but to flourish, you overhaul. 'Repair' suggests fixing a crack; 'overhaul' connotes rethinking the engine. I don't allege need; I demonstrate it: waitlists coil like sleeping serpents, and students chart detours around broken terminals. Shelves sag under yesterday's weight; tomorrow waits in boxes that never open, paper lungs starved of air. A budget is a compass, not a museum tag. To label this a makeover would be cosmetic; to name it triage would be defeat. Choose your word, and you choose your future: invest, and we exhale; delay, and we wheeze.

In the kitchen I am frugal with salt, not stingy. Stinginess hoards from fear; frugality chooses with care. A pinch too many can turn confidence into swagger, and nobody wants a boastful broth. The garlic doesn't shout so much as insist; the thyme does not invade, it insinuates. I taste and edit, editing being kinder than erasing: flavors that quarrel are persuaded into conversation. Some nights the stew is hearty; other nights it is merely heavy, same heft, different heart. My apprentice calls the sauce thick; I suggest lush. Thick is a traffic jam; lush is a velvet curtain. We agree to wait, to let the simmer clarify not only stock but intention. Precision on the tongue becomes precision of thought.