Though the origin of the terms “bull market” and “bear market,” which

sleepynut No, because the sentence lumps the two items together. Similarly, you could say "My brother and sister live in Austin and Portland, respectively." True, each person lives in just one of the two cities, but this form (including the important word "respectively") shows where both people live using one plural verb ("live") instead of two singular verbs ("My brother lives in A and my sister lives in P.").

C wins here, but have doubt about which refers to which item to me it refers to of the terms!
Please correct me guys.

Sent from my vivo 1601 using GMAT Club Forum mobile app

You can say that "which" modifies "terms" or "'bull market' and 'bear market, '" since they are the same thing. Similarly, if I said "The musicians David Bowie and Prince, who both passed away in 2016," we can say that "who" refers to "musicians" or "David Bowie and Prince."

Now if the initial noun were a bit different ("the concept of bull markets and bear markets" or "the duo of David Bowie and Prince," then we'd have to make it clear which noun(s) we intended to modify--the initial noun or the two in the following modifier.

"The concept of bull and bear markets, which was first introduced . . ."
or
"The concept of bull and bear markets, which correspond to upward and downward market trends, respectively."

"The duo of David Bowie and Prince, a pairing that was both bizarre and seemingly inevitable . . . "
or
"The duo of David Bowie and Prince, two musicians who . . . " (Notice that in this last example, "David Bowie and Prince" is modified by "two musicians," which is in turn modified by "who.")

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:

This subject-verb agreement problem features a classic testmaker technique: include a bunch of nouns between the subject and the verb, and challenge you to determine which noun is the subject. First, look at the answer choices and see the obvious decision point between "is" and "are debated" - a clear hint to focus on subject-verb agreement.

To do that effectively, you will need to "slash and burn" the modifiers between the subject (origin) and the verb (are debated). "of the terms..." is a prepositional modifier, and "which refer..." is a relative clause modifier. If you ignore those modifiers - a very helpful strategy on subject-verb agreement problems - you're left with "Though the origin are debated" which is clearly wrong. "The origin" is singular, requiring a singular verb "is debated." This renders choices A and E incorrect.

With the remaining choices, look for the next clear decision point. You have another verb decision to make in the middle of each choice: "which refer" vs. "which refers." What is the subject of "refers"? It's the terms, plural, meaning that you need "refer," the plural verb. This eliminates choice B.

Finally, between C and D, note the importance of the word "though" at the beginning of the sentence. Without it, you're left with two clauses that are unconnected (The origin is debated, these colloquialisms have been hallmarks...). In order to connect the two clauses, a transition is required, and only choice C provides that. Therefore, choice C is correct.

Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

Thanks to another GMAT Club member, I have just discovered this valuable topic, yet it had no discussion for over a year. I am now bumping it up - doing my job. I think you may find it valuable (esp those replies with Kudos).

Want to see all other topics I dig out? Follow me (click follow button on profile). You will receive a summary of all topics I bump in your profile area as well as via email.