Which one of the following words can be used as a substitute for the phrase, “A nursery where children of working parents are cared for while their parents are at work”?

Correct — B, (b) Crèche.

A crèche is a day nursery where infants and small children are looked after while their parents are at work, which is the printed phrase almost word for word. The word is French and its first meaning is a crib or manger — the manger of the Nativity — from which it passed to the institution that keeps babies in cribs through the working day. English took it in the nineteenth century and has kept the accent on the first vowel; the booklet prints it as ‘Crèche’.

For a candidate sitting an EPFO paper the word is worth more than a vocabulary mark, because the crèche is a statutory institution in Indian labour law and not merely a private convenience. Section 48 of the Factories Act, 1948 requires a room for the use of children under six years of age in every factory where more than thirty women workers are ordinarily employed, and lays down that it shall be adequately lighted and ventilated, kept clean and placed under the charge of trained women. The Plantations Labour Act, 1951 carries a comparable requirement for plantations. The obligation was then generalised beyond factories: the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 inserted section 11A into the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, requiring every establishment having fifty or more employees to provide a crèche facility, and allowing the mother four visits a day to it, including her rest interval.

So the answer sits at the exact meeting point of this paper’s two halves. It is an English Language item in Part A, and the same word is a duty owed by an employer under statutes that Part B of this paper examines at length. The other three options name places too, but each is defined by a different function — sleeping, dining, rowing — and none of them has anything to do with the care of young children.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)Sculler — A ‘sculler’ is not a place at all but a person: one who sculls, that is, rows a boat using a pair of short oars called sculls, or a single oar worked over the stern. The word belongs to rowing and has no connection with children, with work or with care. It is on the page as a trap of sound rather than of sense, because it sits close to two domestic words a hurried reader may half-remember — ‘scullery’, the small room off a kitchen where washing-up is done, and ‘scullion’, an old word for a kitchen servant. Neither of those means a nursery either, so even the misremembering does not lead anywhere.
• (c)Dormitory — A ‘dormitory’ is a room containing many beds, or a building of such rooms, provided for sleeping in a school, hostel or institution; the word is from Latin dormire, to sleep, the root also of dormant and dormouse. Two things separate it from the answer. It is defined by sleeping rather than by care, and it is associated with residents who look after themselves — pupils, students, travellers — not with infants who cannot. A crèche exists for the working day and returns the child to the parent at the end of it, which is exactly what the printed phrase describes.
• (d)Refectory — A ‘refectory’ is a dining hall, in origin the hall of a monastery and now used of colleges and other institutions; it comes from Latin reficere, to restore or refresh, the same root as ‘refection’, an old word for a meal. Like ‘dormitory’ it names a place by the activity carried on in it, and that activity is eating. Nothing in the printed phrase mentions meals; the defining elements there are the age of the children, the fact that their parents are at work, and the care given in the meanwhile.

A one-word substitution item is a definition read backwards. The printed phrase is a dictionary definition with the headword removed, and the task is to supply the headword. The method that works is to isolate the defining elements of the phrase and then test each option against all of them, not against the first that matches.

Here the phrase has four elements: a nursery, children, whose parents are working, cared for during the working hours. Three of the options match the first element loosely — a dormitory, a refectory and a nursery are all rooms in institutions — and none of them matches the rest. That is the usual design: the wrong options overlap the definition in one respect and fail in the others.

English is rich in words for institutions and the people in them, and the group is worth learning as a group: crèche for infants in the working day, nursery for very young children generally, orphanage for children without parents, hostel and dormitory for those living away from home, sanatorium for those recovering from long illness, hospice for the terminally ill, asylum in its older sense of a place of refuge, almshouse for the poor of a parish, refectory for meals and cloister for retirement from the world. Each is defined by whom it shelters and why, and examiners construct the options by mixing those two variables.

Key facts

• A crèche is a day nursery for infants and small children, kept while their parents are at work; the word is French for a crib or manger and English has kept its accent.
• Section 48 of the Factories Act, 1948 requires a room for children under six years of age in every factory ordinarily employing more than thirty women workers, under the charge of trained women.
• The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 inserted section 11A in the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, requiring a crèche facility in establishments having fifty or more employees, with four visits a day allowed to the mother.
• ‘Dormitory’ is from Latin dormire, to sleep, and names a room of beds; ‘refectory’ is from Latin reficere, to restore, and names a dining hall.
• ‘Sculler’ names a person who rows with sculls, and is placed among the options as a trap of sound beside ‘scullery’ and ‘scullion’.
• A one-word substitution phrase is a definition with its headword removed, so the option must satisfy every defining element in it, not merely the first.

Common traps

• Matching only the first element of the printed phrase. Three of these options are rooms in institutions and only one is a room for the care of small children.
• Confusing ‘sculler’ with ‘scullery’ or ‘scullion’; none of the three has any connection with children, so even the confusion leads nowhere.
• Choosing ‘dormitory’ because children sleep there. A crèche is defined by care during the parents’ working hours, not by beds.
• Rejecting the correct option because of its accent or its French look; a borrowed word is an English word once the language has taken it in.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following words can be used as a substitute for the phrase, “A hall in a college or a monastery where meals are taken”?

  • (a)Dormitory
  • (b)Refectory
  • (c)Crèche
  • (d)Lobby

  Answer(b) Refectory — from Latin reficere, to restore, a refectory is the dining hall of a monastery, college or similar institution. A dormitory is for sleeping, a crèche for the care of small children, and a lobby is an entrance space.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following words can be used as a substitute for the phrase, “An establishment that provides care for people who are terminally ill”?

  • (a)Clinic
  • (b)Dispensary
  • (c)Hospice
  • (d)Sanatorium

  Answer(c) Hospice — a hospice cares for those whose illness cannot be cured. A clinic gives outpatient treatment, a dispensary issues medicines, and a sanatorium is for recovery from long illness, which assumes recovery is expected.