1. Since the announcement of the telco's poor first quarter growth margin, .......... had set in among the company's unhappy workers.

2. The sales pitch was very confusing. The stressed-out team was told it could be given only one more opportunity to .......... its ideas more clearly.

3. The new manager refused to hold meetings with the accounts department, leading many sceptics to allege that his grip on the company's financial status must be .......... at most.

4. Fortunately for the line manager, the charge of credit-card fraud of which he was accused contained not a .......... of convincing evidence.

5. The market analyst .......... the commentator's argument that the textile industry was on the decline.

6. An unforseen and truly .......... chain of events led to the resignation of both the manager and the deputy manager.

7. The speaker had terrible difficulty dealing with new audiences and always developed .......... palms before giving a presentation.

8. The new mobile phones may be very trendy, but their weight and small screen size mean that they were hardly ideally built for .......... purposes.

9. Behind a .......... of profitability, the company was in fact sinking into greater and greater debt.

10. The investor unwisely bought the shares on a .......... without any knowledge of the company's market history.