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Here's your shmoop du jour, brought to you by Ellis Island. A great place to try to see

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up the Statue of Liberty's robe.

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In line 56, "destitute" most nearly means... what?

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And here are the potential answers...

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The question points us to line 56, so to line 56 we go.

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According to the passage, one of the immigration laws of the late 19th century was aimed at

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preventing "destitute" people from coming to the United States for the sole purpose

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of going on welfare.

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By following this train of thought, we can conclude that the law thought people without

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money would want to apply for money from the government. So, basically, we're looking

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for a word that means "poor."

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Being poor might be kind of depressing, but not having any money doesn't necessarily

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mean that you're sad all the time.

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So Choice (A) is a no. The prefix "de" in front of "stabilized"

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reminds us that the word refers to something that's been made unstable. Being "destitute"

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is most likely not a very stable situation...

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But--again--these two words don't always go hand in hand. Choice (B) is out.

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When a person is distinguished it usually means that they're super good at something

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and everybody thinks they're awesome.

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We've never heard of anybody who was "distinguished" for being poor, so we're gonna scratch (C).

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"Partial" means to be biased toward or in favor of something...

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But when you add the prefix "im," which usually means "not," to the word it suddenly

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means the opposite: "not partial."

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Of course, being impartial doesn't have much to do with being poor either, so (D) is rejected.

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Okay, here's one of the few examples of when the prefix "im" doesn't mean "not."

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"Impoverished" comes from the root word poverty, which is the state of being extremely

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poor. If our rule about "im" meaning "not" was true here, then "impoverished" would

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mean "not poor."

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However, in this case the prefix takes on one of its alternative meanings: "within."

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So, impoverished means to be "within a state of poverty" and refers to anyone who's

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really poor.

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This, of course, matches the definition of "destitute" for which we've been looking;

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so (E) is the correct answer.

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