( ) distinguish

He has the ( ) distinction of being the only one in the class to fail the examination.
1. outstanding 2. dubious 3. impressive 4. remarkable 5. extrinsic

I'm not sure which one to choose. I personally think "remarkable distinguish" is better than "outstanding distinguish" because the sentence has the negative phrase "fail the exam". But I'm not sure.

[dduck]

Originally Posted by reo

He has the ( ) distinction of being the only one in the class to fail the examination.
1. outstanding 2. dubious 3. impressive 4. remarkable 5. extrinsic

I'm not sure which one to choose. I personally think "remarkable distinguish" is better than "outstanding distinguish" because the sentence has the negative phrase "fail the exam". But I'm not sure.

The answer here is 2. All the other possibilities have a positive sense, which doesn't reflect the sense of the negative sense of the sentence: he failed the exam. It was a distintion because he was alone, but it was a negative distinction, or a dubious distintion (somewhat ironic).

Iain

[RonBee]

Yes, it's dubious distinction.

In fact, dubious distinction is a fairly common collocation.

• dubious distinction
  http://ms101.mysearch.com/jsp/GGmain...distinction%22
  
  dubious honor
  http://ms101.mysearch.com/jsp/GGmain...bious+honor%22
  
  dubious result
  http://ms101.mysearch.com/jsp/GGmain...ious+result%22
  
  dubious motives
  http://ms101.mysearch.com/jsp/GGmain...ous+motives%22
  
  dubious plan
  http://ms101.mysearch.com/jsp/GGmain...ubious+plan%22
  
  dubious excuse
  http://ms101.mysearch.com/jsp/GGmain...ious+excuse%22
  
  dubious rewards
  http://ms101.mysearch.com/jsp/GGmain...ous+rewards%22
  
  dubious legacy
  http://ms101.mysearch.com/jsp/GGmain...ious+legacy%22
  
  dubious assumption
  http://ms101.mysearch.com/jsp/GGmain...+assumption%22

Meaning doubful or questionable, the word dubious invariably has negative connotations (and implications).

[RonBee]

Example:

• He had the dubious distinction of being the last in his class.

A dubious distinction is the kind a person would not want to have.