Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (EO/AO) 2017 recruitment test. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, GRS-A-TNS); answer as per the official UPSC final answer key. This question is in Part A. Answer last reviewed 24 August 2026.

Which one of the following can be used as a substitute for the words written in capital letters in the sentence, “Serving the sufferers is true YEOMAN’S SERVICE”?

(a)A risky job
(b)An amusing job
(c)An excellent work
(d)An unwanted job

Answer

Why

Correct — C, (c) An excellent work.

‘Yeoman’s service’ means sturdy, faithful and genuinely useful help, especially help given when it is needed. The phrase carries its history with it. A yeoman in England was a freeholder who farmed his own land, ranking below the gentry and above the labourer, and the word was also used of an attendant in a royal or noble household — a sense that survives in the Yeomen of the Guard, the sovereign’s bodyguard. The yeoman’s reputation was for solid, dependable, unspectacular worth, and the English yeoman archers were long remembered for exactly that quality in the field. Out of that reputation came the idiom: to do yeoman’s service is to render service of real value, workmanlike and wholehearted. Its best-known literary appearance is in Hamlet, where Hamlet says of his ability to write a fair hand that ‘it did me yeoman’s service’.

So the substitution has to be a term of praise for the quality of the work done, and only one option on the page praises anything. The sentence agrees: ‘Serving the sufferers is true YEOMAN’S SERVICE’ commends those who look after the afflicted, and the word ‘true’ before the capitals is itself a mark of approval — one does not call a job ‘true’ unless the phrase that follows is a compliment.

A point about the option as printed. It reads ‘An excellent work’, whereas ‘work’ in this general sense is uncountable in standard English, which would ordinarily give ‘excellent work’ or ‘an excellent piece of work’. The wording is the paper’s own and the sense it intends is unmistakable; the option is offering the meaning of the capitalised phrase, and that meaning is work of high quality.

Why the others are wrong

(a)A risky job — ‘A risky job’ imports danger, which is no part of the phrase. Yeoman’s service may be rendered in perfectly safe circumstances — Hamlet uses it of his handwriting — and what the idiom praises is the usefulness and the reliability of the help, not the hazard undergone. The option is plausible only if a candidate half-remembers the yeoman as a soldier and slides from the archer to the risk he ran. English has other phrases for service under danger, such as going into the breach or standing in the firing line, and this is not one of them.
(b)An amusing job — ‘An amusing job’ has no connection with the phrase at all. There is nothing comic in the idiom, and nothing comic in the sentence, which is about serving people who are suffering. The option appears to have been formed by taking a positive-sounding adjective of an entirely different kind, and it is the easiest of the three to discard. Its presence is a reminder that an option can be sound English and still be irrelevant to the phrase it claims to substitute for.
(d)An unwanted job — ‘An unwanted job’ reverses the sense. The idiom is a compliment, and this option turns it into a complaint about work nobody wishes to do. It also fights the sentence, which calls the service ‘true’ and holds up serving the sufferers as something admirable. A candidate who does not know the idiom might reason that looking after the afflicted is thankless labour and reach for this option on the strength of the subject matter rather than the phrase, which is precisely the reasoning it is placed there to attract.

Concept

Idioms of the kind tested here are historical fossils: a phrase preserves a social fact long after the fact itself has gone. ‘Yeoman’s service’ keeps alive a rank in English rural society; ‘to learn the ropes’ keeps a sailing ship; ‘to be given the sack’ keeps the bag of tools a dismissed workman carried away; ‘at the eleventh hour’ keeps a parable about labourers hired late in the day. Knowing the origin is not necessary to answer, but it fixes the meaning in the memory far better than a definition does, and it explains why the phrase praises the particular thing it praises — in this case reliability and usefulness rather than brilliance.

The practical technique for a substitution item has two steps beyond recognising the phrase. First, settle its polarity: is it praise, blame, or neutral? That alone eliminates options here, since one option praises and two do not, and the fourth is irrelevant. Second, check the polarity against the sentence, which usually carries a word that marks the writer’s attitude — ‘true’ in this sentence, ‘since the matter is over’ in the previous item, ‘surviving on just a few rupees a week’ at Q18.

English keeps a small stock of set phrases for good service — yeoman’s service, sterling work, a labour of love, going the extra mile — and each has its own colouring.

Q20 is the last question of Part A. The next page of the booklet opens Part B, which runs from Q21 to Q120 and is printed with an English page first and a Hindi page after it; Part A itself is printed in English only, which is why this paper ships one hundred and twenty questions in English and one hundred in Hindi.

The item is printed in the section’s usual way. The words under test appear in full capitals inside the quoted sentence, with the curly apostrophe this booklet uses throughout; nothing in Part A is underlined. Together with Q19 it forms the idiom pair that closes the section.

Looking back across the twenty items, the section has changed its task eight times — synonym, antonym, error spotting, one-word substitution, question tag, phrasal verb, preposition and idiom substitution — and has stated each task inside the stem of each item rather than in a shared block of directions. That is the single most important structural fact about Part A of this paper, and the habit it demands is to read the first line of every stem as carefully as the sentence that follows it. The vocabulary throughout has been the ordinary working register of English rather than a hard-word list, which is a fair guide to what preparation is worth doing.

Key facts

‘Yeoman’s service’ means sturdy, faithful and genuinely useful help, especially at a time of need; it praises reliability and usefulness rather than brilliance.
A yeoman was an English freeholder farming his own land, and also an attendant in a royal household — a sense surviving in the Yeomen of the Guard.
The phrase’s best-known literary use is in Hamlet, where Hamlet says of his fair handwriting that ‘it did me yeoman’s service’.
The word ‘true’ before the capitals in the printed sentence marks the writer’s approval and confirms that the phrase is a compliment.
Option (c) is printed as ‘An excellent work’, though ‘work’ in this sense is uncountable in standard English, which would give ‘excellent work’ or ‘an excellent piece of work’.
This is the last item of Part A; Part B follows from Q21 to Q120, with an English page and then a Hindi page, while Part A is printed in English only.

Settle the polarity first — is the phrase praise, blame, or neither?

YEOMAN’S SERVICE — praise→Sturdy, faithful and genuinely useful help, especially when it is needed. A yeoman was an English freeholder farming his own land, and also an attendant in a royal household — the sense surviving in the Yeomen of the Guard — and the reputation was for solid, dependable, unspectacular worth.

(c) An excellent work→The only option on the page that praises anything, and praise is what the idiom carries. It is printed as ‘An excellent work’, though ‘work’ in this general sense is uncountable in standard English, which would give ‘excellent work’ or ‘an excellent piece of work’.

(a) A risky job→Imports danger, which is no part of the phrase — Hamlet uses it of his fair handwriting, saying ‘it did me yeoman’s service’. What the idiom praises is usefulness and reliability, not the hazard undergone.

(d) An unwanted job→Reverses the sense, turning a compliment into a complaint about work nobody wishes to do. It also fights the sentence, which calls the service ‘true’ and holds up serving the sufferers as admirable.

(b) An amusing job→No connection with the phrase at all, and nothing comic in a sentence about serving people who are suffering. Sound English, and irrelevant to the phrase it claims to substitute for.

The sentence marks the polarity→The word ‘true’ before the capitals is itself a mark of approval — one does not call a job ‘true’ unless the phrase that follows is a compliment.

Study next

Idioms that preserve an old social or working world: yeoman’s service, learn the ropes, get the sack, at the eleventh hour, above board, by and large.Set phrases for good and bad service: sterling work, a labour of love, going the extra mile, against lip service, a botched job, a half-hearted effort.Settling the polarity of an idiom before testing the options, and reading the sentence for the word that marks the writer’s attitude.Countable and uncountable nouns in evaluative phrases: excellent work, a piece of work, good advice, a piece of advice, useful information.The structure of Part A on EPFO papers — eight small task types in twenty items, each stating its own instruction.

Common traps

Reasoning from the subject matter instead of the phrase. Serving sufferers may be thankless labour, but the idiom under test is a compliment.
Sliding from the yeoman archer to the idea of danger and choosing an option about risk, which the phrase does not carry.
Failing to settle the polarity of the idiom first; here it eliminates two options at once.
Being deflected by the wording of the printed option; ‘An excellent work’ is offering the meaning of the phrase, which is work of high quality.

The last two items of Part A are always idiom substitutions on this paper, and the idioms are drawn from the common English stock rather than from a specialist list. The options are built to a pattern — one accurate gloss, one literal or half-remembered reading, one reversal of the sense, and one irrelevance — so polarity settles most of the set before any fine judgement is needed. Expect the printed sentence to contain a word marking approval or disapproval, and use it as a check on the option chosen.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q19Open & attempt →

Which one of the following can be used as a substitute for the words written in capital letters in the sentence, “There is no meaning to CRY OVER THE SPILT MILK since the matter is over”?

(a) No use of worrying about
(b) No use of spilling now
(c) No use of celebration
(d) No use of asking for

Answer(a) No use of worrying about

The other idiom item of the closing pair, where the trap is the literal reading of the picture inside the proverb.

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q18Open & attempt →

Which one of the following prepositions may be used in the blank space in the sentence, “He lived a hand ____ mouth existence, surviving on just a few rupees a week”?

(a) in
(b) to
(c) for
(d) inside

Answer(b) to

The preposition item just before the pair, which also depends on recognising a fixed English phrase as a whole.

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q1Open & attempt →

Which one of the following is the synonym of the word written in capital letters in the sentence, “The FUNDAMENTAL character of an individual defines his entire life”?

(a) Productive
(b) Essential
(c) Successful
(d) Effective

Answer(b) Essential

The first item of Part A, where the same principle decides the answer — settle what the tested expression actually says before weighing options that merely sound complimentary.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following can be used as a substitute for the words written in capital letters in the sentence, “The team’s HERCULEAN efforts brought the survey to a close in a week”?
- (a)Very great and demanding
- (b)Very quick and careless
- (c)Very cheap
- (d)Very secret
Answer(a) Very great and demanding — the phrase alludes to the labours of Hercules and describes effort of extraordinary size and difficulty. The other three name speed, cost and secrecy, none of which the allusion carries.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following can be used as a substitute for the word written in capital letters in the sentence, “The junior clerk was made a SCAPEGOAT for a delay he had not caused”?
- (a)A trusted adviser
- (b)One blamed for the faults of others
- (c)An idle worker
- (d)A newly recruited hand
Answer(b) One blamed for the faults of others — the word comes from the goat on which the sins of the people were laid before it was driven into the wilderness, and it names a person made to bear another’s blame. The sentence itself says the delay was not his.

Why