As used in the text, what does the word "economy" most nearly mean?

Question

Reviewers of Lorine Niedecker's poems reach almost reflexively for the word "small," but the term flatters the wrong quality. A five-line Niedecker poem may hold a marriage, a flood, and a county's worth of gossip; nothing has been left out so much as pared down, until each surviving word is made to do several jobs at once. What impresses in her work, then, is less the brevity of the poems than their economy: no syllable is spent that does not earn its keep.

Accepted Answer

C. Efficiency of expression. Correct (C): The sentence explains 'economy' immediately after the colon — every syllable does productive work — and the preceding sentence describes words 'made to do several jobs at once.' The quality named is getting maximum effect from each unit of language, i.e., efficiency of expression. (A) takes the passage's spending metaphors ('spent,' 'earn its keep') literally; nothing in the text concerns money. (B) is contradicted by the passage, which stresses that the poems contain a great deal — a marriage, a flood, a county's gossip — so their material is not simple. (D) is the central trap: the text explicitly separates economy from brevity ('less the brevity of the poems than their economy'), so equating economy with compact form ignores the contrast the sentence is built on.

Answer

A. Frugality in financial matters — You read the spending metaphors—"spent," "earn its keep"—literally; the passage is about language, not money.

Answer

B. Simplicity of subject matter — The passage says the opposite: a five-line poem holds a marriage, a flood, and a county's gossip, so the subject matter is anything but simple.

Answer

D. Compactness of form — The sentence explicitly separates the two—"less the brevity of the poems than their economy"—so economy can't mean compactness of form.

Craft and Structure practice question

Answer: C. Efficiency of expression

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