ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

I came across this question at Yahoo Knowledge. 

Question:  Printers such as Johann Gutenberg in Germany were utilizing movable type and hand press, until the 19th century, the problem of distance had only been "attacked" by the invention of faster and more effective means of transportation.

Attacked in the paragraph can be replaced as
A. Fought B. worsened C. approached D. solved

Someone was asking why the answer is (C) and not (D).  His confusion was around the English usage of: "solve the problem".     

The reason that you cannot choose (D) is because 

It did not indicate that the problem had been resolved.  It only indicated that the problem was worked on, that we had put a lot of effort working on looking at the problem.   (Maybe eventually we will solve the problem, but this is not stated in the sentence).

If you choose the word “solved”, it indicated this is no longer a problem, which is not what “attacked” meant.

Approach = to begin work on (開始著手), which is similar to what the word “attack” is stating.

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