Fill each of the numbered blanks in the following passage with ONE suitable word.

It is often said that the British talk about the weather more than any other people in the world; some extremists (1.)______ that they talk about nothing else. But in fact, even in countries with (2.)______ less changeable climates than Britain’s, the weather is an endless, if not varied, (3.)______ of conversational fodder. This seems only natural when you consider that the weather is one of the few things we all have in (4.)______. It affects our senses, and (5.)______ our moods, so directly and, at times, so intensely (6.)______ it is only natural we should talk about it. After several days (7.)______ even weeks of dark, gloomy weather, a bright day tends to bring out the best in everyone; people recognize the relief (8.)______ others’ expressions which they feel inside themselves, and find it hard to resist commenting a change which is having such an evident (9.)______ on everyone. “Nice day, isn’t it?” is much more than simply a comment on the state of the weather; it is a comment on the human state itself, an acknowledgement that the tenability of our place in the universe depends

(10.)______ the existence of a community of human feeling