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  3. It is curious to note how slowly the mechanism of the intellectual life improves. Contrast the ordinary library facilities of a

It is curious to note how slowly the mechanism of the intellectual life improves. Contrast the ordinary library facilities of a

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问题      It is curious to note how slowly the mechanism of the intellectual life improves. Contrast the ordinary library facilities of a middle-class English home with the inconveniences of the equipment of an Alexandrian writer, and one realizes the enormous waste of time, physical exertion, and attention that went on through all the centuries during which the library flourished.
   Before the present writer lies half a dozen books, and there are good indices to them. He can pick up any one of these six books, refer quickly to a statement, verify a quotation, and go on writing. In contrast with the tedious unfolding of a rolled manuscript, close at hand are two encyclopedias, a dictionary, an atlas of the world, a biographical dictionary, and other books of reference.
     However, there were no such resources in the world in 300 B.C. Alexandria had still to produce the first grammar and the first dictionary. The present writer writes a book in manuscript; then the book is typed out very accurately by a typist. It can then, with the utmost convenience, be read over, corrected amply, rearranged freely, retyped, and reconnected. The Alexandrian author had to dictate or recopy every word he wrote. Before he could mm back to what he had written previously, he had to dry his last words by waving them in the air or pouring sand over them; he had not even blotting-paper. Whatever an author wrote had to be recopied again and again before it could reach any considerable circle of readers, and every copyist introduced some new error. New books were dictated to a roomful of copyists, and so issued in a first edition of some hundreds at least. Whenever a need for maps or diagrams arose, there were fresh difficulties. Such a science as anatomy, for example, depending upon accurate drawing, must have been enormously hampered by the natural limitations of the copyist. The transmission of geographical fact again must have been almost incredibly tedious.
What does the word "tedious" (Line 3, Para. 2) mean?
选项 A、Interesting and wonderful.
B、Necessary.
C、Brief.
D、Long and uninteresting.
答案D
解析 本题考查语义理解。从第二段末句可知，该句将当代人查阅资料的便利(close at hand)与Alexandria时代的不便相比较，那么“tedious”只能是表达负面意义的词，即“冗长的，沉闷的”。选项 A 、B 、C 都含有褒义，放在文章中，不通顺，因此排除。
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