His views on the matter have been impugned by those evaluating his role in the community as its erstwhile ruler.

Correct — A, (a) challenged.

The word underlined in the printed stem is 'impugned'.

To impugn is to call something into question - to dispute its truth, its validity or the integrity of the person behind it. The root is Latin impugnare, from in- (against) and pugnare (to fight), the same pugnare that gives English pugnacious and repugnant. The fighting sense has narrowed over time into a specific kind of attack: an attack by way of challenge, made in argument. One impugns a witness's credibility, a claim, a motive, a decision - always by disputing it rather than by ridiculing it.

'Challenged' is the standard one-word equivalent and it matches on every count: it means to dispute, to question the correctness of, to call to account. Substituted into the sentence it reads exactly as the original does - 'His views on the matter have been challenged by those evaluating his role in the community' - with no change of force or register.

It is worth noticing what the sentence tells us about the word even for a reader who does not know it. The people doing the impugning are 'those evaluating his role', that is, assessors making a judgement, and what they act upon is 'his views'. Views are things that get disputed. The construction takes a passive with a by-agent, so the verb must be transitive and adversarial, and among the four options only two are both - and one of those two points in the opposite direction. Context does most of the work here even without the etymology.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)belittled — 'Belittled' is the serious rival and needs a proper answer. To belittle is to make something seem small or unimportant - to disparage, to minimise. It shares with 'impugn' the fact that it is hostile and that its object can be a person's work or standing, which is why it feels available here. The difference is the manner of the attack. Impugning is disputing: it says the thing is not true, not valid, not honestly held, and it belongs to argument. Belittling is diminishing: it does not deny the claim, it treats it as trivial, and it belongs to disparagement. In the sentence, people evaluating a former ruler's role are assessing whether his views hold up, which is challenge and not mockery. A candidate who chooses (b) has the hostility right and the mechanism wrong.
• (c)enhanced — 'Enhanced' means increased, improved or strengthened, and it reverses the sentence. Impugning is an attack on a claim; enhancing is support for it. The reversal is easy to spot from the sentence alone, because the surrounding clause describes people 'evaluating his role in the community as its erstwhile ruler' - the language of scrutiny of a former officeholder, not of endorsement. Antonyms are a standard component of synonym option sets on these papers, and they are the cheapest option to strike out, since only the direction of the word need be known.
• (d)endured — 'Endured' means either to suffer something patiently or to last over time, and neither sense fits the grammar of the sentence. In its first sense it takes as its object the hardship being suffered - one endures pain, criticism, a long wait - so 'his views have been endured by those evaluating his role' would mean his views were put up with, an odd claim and not the one the sentence makes. In its second sense it is intransitive: views endure, they are not endured by anybody. The option is not a near-miss at all but a word from a different field, present to fill out the list.

The verbs of hostile response in English differ by the mechanism of the attack, and a synonym item on any one of them is really a test of whether the mechanism has been noticed.

Disputing the truth or validity of a claim: impugn, challenge, contest, question, dispute, rebut, refute, controvert. Diminishing the importance of something: belittle, disparage, deprecate, denigrate, minimise, trivialise. Attacking a person rather than a claim: vilify, malign, slander, defame, revile. Opposing by force or obstruction: resist, thwart, obstruct, oppose.

Impugn sits squarely in the first group, though it retains one connection with the third: an impugned motive or an impugned character is a person's integrity being disputed, which is why the word often appears in legal and parliamentary writing.

The useful discipline is to ask what the object of the verb is in the sentence. Claims and views are disputed. Reputations and achievements are diminished. Persons are maligned. When the object is 'his views on the matter', the verb is almost certainly one of disputing, and the option list can be sorted before the tested word is even recognised.

Etymology confirms it: impugnare, to fight against, gives a word whose whole life in English has been about attacking a position in argument.

Key facts

• To impugn is to call into question - to dispute the truth, validity or integrity of a claim, a motive or a person's honesty; it belongs to argument rather than to ridicule.
• The word descends from Latin impugnare, in- (against) plus pugnare (to fight), the root that also produces pugnacious and repugnant.
• Impugn is a transitive verb that works naturally in the passive with a by-agent, which is how the stem uses it and which is enough to eliminate an intransitive option.
• To belittle is to make something seem small or unimportant; it shares hostility with impugn but attacks the importance of a thing rather than its truth.
• The object of the verb is the quickest sort: claims and views are challenged or disputed, reputations and achievements are belittled, and persons are maligned.

Common traps

• Choosing 'belittled' because it is hostile; hostility is the genus, and the item is decided by the species - dispute rather than diminishment.
• Reading past the grammatical frame, which by itself rules out an intransitive option in a passive construction with a by-agent.
• Assuming the tested word must be the hardest word in the sentence; 'erstwhile' is also unusual here and is not underlined.
• Treating impugn as a synonym for insult, which imports an emotional colouring the word does not have in careful use.
• Failing to notice that one option reverses the sense, which is the standard antonym distractor and the easiest mark in the item.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Counsel sought to impugn the credibility of the sole eyewitness. In this sentence, 'impugn' means to :

  • (a)call into question
  • (b)make fun of
  • (c)confirm
  • (d)endure patiently

  Answer(a) call into question - impugning a witness's credibility is disputing that the witness can be believed. (b) names ridicule rather than dispute, (c) reverses the sense, and (d) belongs to a different verb entirely.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following sentences uses 'belittle' rather than 'impugn' correctly ?

  • (a)The auditors belittled the accuracy of the figures and asked for the vouchers
  • (b)He belittled the contribution of the junior staff, calling it a small matter
  • (c)The defence belittled the witness's account as untrue in every particular
  • (d)The report belittled the minister's integrity in office

  Answer(b) He belittled the contribution of the junior staff, calling it a small matter - belittling makes something seem unimportant. The other three dispute truth, accuracy or integrity, which is impugning.