EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 8 of 120

Correct — C, (c) 'Neglected and broken down'. The word underlined in the booklet is 'derelict', and the Directions governing items 6 to 10 ask for the option closest in meaning to it. As an adjective, 'derelict' describes something — most often a building, a ship or a piece of land — that has been left to itself and has decayed as a result. The word carries two linked components, a cause and a condition: abandonment or neglect, and the physical ruin that follows from it. Option (c) is the only one that names both. The etymology holds them together: 'derelict' comes from the Latin 'derelinquere', to abandon utterly, formed from 'relinquere', to leave behind, which also gives English 'relinquish'. A derelict ship is one the crew has left; a derelict building is one its owners have stopped maintaining. The sentence is built to point at exactly this. 'The hundred-year old college building was now in a derelict state' turns on 'now': the building has a long past and has arrived at a condition it was not in before. What has changed is not its age but its upkeep. Note also how the options divide — (a) and (d) both describe a building still in good order, while (b) and (c) describe a building in bad order — so the item is decided in two steps: choose the negative camp, then prefer the option that names neglect over the one that names a possible consequence of neglect.

• (a)Preserved for historical value — The opposite of what the word says, and offered for the candidate who reads 'hundred-year old college building' and thinks 'heritage'. Age and dereliction are independent: a hundred-year-old building may be immaculately conserved, and a ten-year-old one may already be derelict if it has been left empty and unmaintained. The sentence's 'now … in a derelict state' marks a deterioration, and preservation is the state a derelict building has precisely failed to receive. This option and (d) say much the same thing, which is itself a signal that neither is the key.
• (b)Unsafe for occupation — The strongest distractor, because it is often true of derelict buildings — but it names a consequence rather than the meaning. The two come apart in both directions. A solid stone warehouse can stand abandoned for decades, unquestionably derelict and structurally sound; a fully occupied, well-maintained building can be unsafe because of a design fault or a gas leak, and no one would call it derelict. 'Derelict' reports how a thing has been treated and what condition that has left it in, not whether it may lawfully be used. Substituting a likely effect for the sense of a word is the commonest way to lose a closest-in-meaning item.
• (d)Retaining its original beauty — Contradicts the sentence outright. If the building retained its original beauty, the word 'now' and the phrase 'in a derelict state' would have nothing to report. Like option (a), this option belongs to the positive camp — it describes a building that has been looked after — and 'derelict' is unambiguously a word of decay. The pairing of two positive options against two negative ones is a common construction in this set; once you have placed the underlined word on the negative side, half the field disappears at a stroke.

'Derelict' sits in a family of words for buildings in poor condition, and examiners choose between them by asking which fault each one names. Dilapidated means fallen into disrepair, with the emphasis on the physical breakdown. Ramshackle means rickety and badly put together, whether new or old. Decrepit means worn out, usually by age, and applies to people as readily as to things. Abandoned means simply left, with no claim about the state it is in. Derelict is the word that combines abandonment with the decay that follows it — it is 'abandoned and therefore falling apart', which is why the key pairs 'neglected' with 'broken down'. The word has two further uses worth knowing. As a noun it names an abandoned property or vessel, and, in older usage, a destitute person. As an adjective applied to people it means shamefully negligent, surviving mainly in the fixed phrase 'derelict in his duties' and in the noun 'dereliction of duty', which is a formal charge in service and disciplinary rules — a sense an APFC candidate is more likely to meet in an administrative file than in a description of a building.

This is the third of the five vocabulary items governed by the Directions block above item 6, and it is the most tractable of the set, because the underlined word is common and its polarity is unmistakable. What the item still tests is precision. Two options describe a well-kept building and can be discarded together; the real decision is between 'neglected and broken down' and 'unsafe for occupation', and it turns on whether you can separate what a word means from what it usually implies. That separation is the single most valuable habit in this section of the paper. Each question carries 2·5 marks with a third deducted for a wrong response, so an item like this one — where a candidate who knows the word can still be walked into a consequence-shaped distractor — is where marks are quietly lost. Note the stem as printed: the booklet sets 'hundred-year old' with a hyphen only between 'hundred' and 'year', where standard usage hyphenates the whole compound modifier as 'hundred-year-old'. It is reproduced exactly as printed and it does not affect the answer.

• 'Derelict' as an adjective means in a very poor condition as a result of disuse and neglect, and so abandoned and falling apart. It joins a cause, abandonment, to a result, decay, and an option that gives only one of the two is an incomplete match.
• The word comes from Latin 'derelinquere', to abandon utterly, built on 'relinquere', to leave behind — the same root as 'relinquish'. In maritime usage a derelict is a vessel abandoned at sea by its crew, which is the sense in which the word first entered English.
• 'Derelict' also describes a person who is shamefully negligent, chiefly in the fixed expression 'derelict in his duties'; the corresponding noun, 'dereliction of duty', is a standard formulation in service conduct rules and disciplinary proceedings.
• Neighbouring words fault different things: dilapidated names the disrepair, ramshackle the rickety construction, decrepit the wearing out with age, and abandoned only the leaving. 'Derelict' is the one that asserts both abandonment and the decay that followed.
• The stem is printed 'The hundred-year old college building', hyphenated only between 'hundred' and 'year'; the standard form of a compound modifier of this kind is 'hundred-year-old', hyphenated throughout. The card reproduces the booklet's text unchanged.

• Choosing a likely consequence instead of the meaning. Derelict buildings are often unsafe, but a sound abandoned building is still derelict and an unsafe occupied building is not.
• Letting the age in the sentence suggest heritage. 'Hundred-year old' is there to set up the change of state marked by 'now', not to hint at conservation, and two options exploit the misreading.
• Overlooking that two options can be discarded as a pair. Both positive options describe a well-kept building, so identifying the word's polarity first removes half the field with no risk.

The APFC vocabulary set mixes words that are hard to define with words that are easy to define but easy to blur, and this item is of the second kind. Where the word itself is familiar, the examiner shifts the difficulty into the options: one gives a consequence, one gives an antonym, one gives a second antonym in different clothing, and only one gives the sense. Expect that shape whenever the underlined word is one you are sure of, and check each option by asking whether it could be true of something that is not derelict, or false of something that is.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Choose the option closest in meaning to the underlined word: 'The inspection found the block of flats in a dilapidated condition, with broken stairs and a leaking roof.'

  • (a)recently constructed but poorly designed
  • (b)fallen into disrepair
  • (c)occupied beyond its sanctioned capacity
  • (d)scheduled for demolition

  Answer(b) fallen into disrepair — 'dilapidated' names the physical state of a structure that has decayed, which the broken stairs and leaking roof illustrate. Poor design, overcrowding and a demolition order may all accompany dilapidation, but each describes a different fact about the building; none of them is what the word itself asserts.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In which one of the following sentences is 'derelict' used in its sense of negligent rather than ruined?

  • (a)The mill has stood derelict since the last shift left in 1998.
  • (b)The officer was found derelict in his duties and was suspended.
  • (c)They bought a derelict cottage and restored it over two summers.
  • (d)A derelict barge drifted into the shipping channel overnight.

  Answer(b) The officer was found derelict in his duties and was suspended — here the adjective describes a person's shameful failure to perform an obligation, the sense preserved in the phrase 'dereliction of duty'. The mill, the cottage and the barge are all things abandoned and decayed or adrift, which is the word's primary and physical sense.