A crisis at Banco Espirito Santo(BES), one of Portugal’s biggest banks, prompted a plunge in Portugal’s stock market and lesser

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问题     A crisis at Banco Espirito Santo(BES), one of Portugal’s biggest banks, prompted a plunge in Portugal’s stock market and lesser tumbles elsewhere. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, said that the episode illustrated how swiftly market nerves could return and how fragile the construction of the euro remained. Investors’ confidence in the German economy, Europe’s powerhouse, is waning, according to the ZEW index.
    Industrial production makes up only a fifth of the euro-zone economy. But its poor performance in May,2014 makes it likelier that the overall recovery, which started in the spring of 2013, remains feeble. To date, GDP growth has averaged only 0. 2% a quarter(an annualized rate of 0. 9%).
    Another worry about the recovery is that it has been so uneven. What little growth there was in the first quarter was driven by German output, which expanded sharply. The French economy, the second-biggest in the euro area,stagnated while Italy’s, the third-biggest, contracted.
    Unemployment is still disturbingly high in much of the euro zone. Though the overall jobless rate has fallen since its peak in 2013,it remained at 11. 6% of the labour force in May. That average disguises the fact that in Germany the rate was 5.1% compared with 12. 6% in Italy and 25. 1% in Spain.
    Against this background, it is unsurprising that inflation is stuck at just 0. 5%. Although the European Central Bank(ECB)took steps to counter "low-inflation" in early June, the worry is that it has still not done enough. In a survey of the euro-zone economy published on July 14th, the IMF urged the ECB to adopt quantitative easing—creating money to buy assets including sovereign bonds—if inflation remains too low.
The word "stagnate" in Paragraph 3 probably means______.

选项 A、deteriorating
B、indebting
C、flourishing
D、stopping developing or advancing

答案D

解析 对词义的推测需要依据上下文,最佳的选择方法是逐项排除法。该词位于句子TheFrench economy…stagnated while Italy’s contracted中,while表对比,由contracted可推测stagnated的意思。
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