Difficulty: Easy
Correct Answer: Fatalist
Explanation:
Introduction / Context:
This question tests your knowledge of one-word substitutions related to philosophical beliefs. Many English words are built from Latin or Greek roots and are used to label people according to what they believe. Here, you are asked to choose the correct word for someone who believes in fate, that is, who thinks that events are fixed in advance and human control is limited.
Given Data / Assumptions:
Concept / Approach:
A fatalist is someone who believes in fate or destiny and often thinks that human effort cannot change what is destined to happen. The root fate appears clearly in the word fatalist. The term believer is too broad, since it could refer to belief in anything, religious or otherwise. A futurist focuses on trends and possible futures, which is different from believing that everything is already fixed. Evitalist is a distractor with no clear dictionary meaning. Therefore, fatalist is the precise one-word substitute required by the question.
Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: Focus on the key idea: belief in fate or destiny.Step 2: Recognise the root fate and link it to the word fatalist, which is commonly defined as a person who believes that all events are predetermined.Step 3: Evaluate believer and note that while a fatalist is a kind of believer, the word believer does not tell us what the belief is about.Step 4: Evaluate futurist and recall that futurists try to predict or shape the future rather than simply accepting it as fixed, which is the opposite attitude to classical fatalism.Step 5: Dismiss evitalist as a misleading non-standard term and select fatalist as the accurate one-word label.
Verification / Alternative check:
We can verify by using the word in a sentence. For example, He is a fatalist; he believes that whatever is meant to happen will happen, no matter what we do. This sentence matches the definition in the question exactly. In contrast, saying He is a futurist emphasises interest in future possibilities, and He is a believer leaves the nature of belief unclear. Standard English dictionaries define fatalism as the doctrine that all events are subject to fate, and a fatalist is the person who accepts that doctrine.
Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Evitalist does not correspond to a recognised philosophical term. Believer is too vague to serve as a precise one-word substitution; exams usually expect a specific technical term. Futurist is about anticipation and study of future trends, not acceptance of inexorable destiny. Therefore, these options do not satisfy the definition in the question.
Common Pitfalls:
Students sometimes choose believer because they see the word believes in the stem and simply match it to believer. However, in one-word substitution questions, the exam expects the special, more exact word derived from roots like fate or gamos or phil. Training yourself to look for these roots will help you choose the right technical term instead of a vague generic word.
Final Answer:
A person who believes in fate is called a Fatalist, so option B is correct.
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