McGonigal chooses to use the words scarcity, famine, and abstain. What do these words have in common, and why might McGonigal have selected them? Use context clues or a dictionary for help if needed.

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When Atys was king of Lydia in Asia Minor some three thousand years ago, a great scarcity threatened his realm. For a while people accepted their lot without complaining, in the hope that times of plenty would return. But when things failed to get better, the Lydians devised a strange remedy for their problem. The plan adopted against the famine was to engage in games one day so entirely as not to feel any craving for food … and the next day to eat and abstain from games. In this way they passed eighteen years, and along the way they invented the dice, knuckle-bones, the ball, and all the games which are common.  

McGonigal chooses to use the words scarcity, famine, and abstain. What do these words have in common, and why might McGonigal have selected them? Use context clues or a dictionary for help if needed.

The words have in common the sense of limitation and discomfort, moreover, within the situation that McGonigal narrated these words are the results of the actions that each one promoted.

Explanation:

Within the text narrated by McGonigal, we can see that the words "scarcity", "famine" and "abstain" are established in a cause and consequence relationship, where one is the result of the action of the other. In addition, the three words feel limited and uncomfortable.

This is because due to food shortages, the natives decided to establish a strategy to reduce the hunger they felt. For that, they spent a whole day playing, to occupy their minds and avoid thinking about food, the next day they ate and abstained from the game.