Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (EO/AO) 2020 recruitment test, advertisement 421. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, NMJX-U-GTA); answer as per the official UPSC final answer key. This question is in Part A. Answer last reviewed 24 August 2026.

Directions : Each of the following sentences in this section has a blank space and four words or group of words given after the sentence. Select the word or group of words you consider most appropriate for the blank space and indicate your response on the Answer Sheet accordingly. It's time you went out and ____________ your own living.

(a)afforded
(b)earned
(c)gained
(d)won

Answer

Why

Correct — B, (b) earned.

The blank is fixed by a collocation, not by meaning alone. English has a settled pair of verbs for supporting oneself by work — to earn a living and to make a living — and of the four words offered only ‘earned’ belongs to that pair. ‘Earn’ means to receive money in return for work done, which is exactly what the sentence is urging, and it takes ‘a living’, ‘a livelihood’, ‘wages’, ‘a salary’ as its natural objects.

The frame around the blank confirms it. ‘It's time you went out and …’ is the unreal-past construction: after ‘it is time’ English uses a past tense with present meaning — it's time you went, it's time we left, it's time he took a decision — and it always carries a mild reproach, that something ought to have happened already. The person addressed is being told to stop being supported and start supporting himself, so the verb in the blank has to name the getting of income by work. ‘Earned’ is that verb.

Notice also that the sentence supplies ‘your own living’, not ‘your own money’ or ‘your own prize’. The noun decides the verb here. A candidate who tries each option aloud with the noun attached — afforded a living, earned a living, gained a living, won a living — hears at once that only the second is an expression English actually uses. That substitution test, running the whole phrase rather than judging the single word, is what a fill-in-the-blanks item of this kind is built to reward.

Why the others are wrong

(a)afforded — ‘Afford’ means to have enough money or time to bear the cost of something, and in that sense it is almost always used with ‘can’, ‘could’ or ‘be able to’ — she can afford a car, we could not afford the fees. Its object is the thing paid for, never the income itself, so ‘afforded your own living’ inverts the relation: a living is what pays for things, not a thing paid for. ‘Afford’ has a second, formal sense, ‘to provide or give’ — the terrace affords a fine view, the Act affords protection — but that sense needs a giver and a receiver and cannot be squeezed into this sentence either.
(c)gained — ‘Gain’ means to obtain or acquire something, usually by degrees and usually something desirable that adds to what you already have — gain experience, gain weight, gain access, gain an advantage, gain confidence. It is not the verb English attaches to ‘a living’; ‘gain a living’ is at best archaic and is not current idiom, and it also loses the specific idea of payment for work that ‘earn’ carries. The near-miss is deliberate: ‘gain’ overlaps ‘earn’ in the loose sense of getting something, which is why it is placed here for a candidate reading for meaning alone rather than for the phrase.
(d)won — ‘Win’ means to obtain by victory, competition or chance — win a match, win a prize, win an election, win a lottery. What is won is a stake or a contest, and the winning is a single event rather than a continuing occupation. A living is neither a stake nor a contest, and the sentence describes an ongoing arrangement, not a triumph. ‘Win’ does appear in a few older set phrases about subsistence, such as winning one's bread, but ‘won your own living’ is not one of them and would sound wrong to any native reader.

Concept

This item tests collocation — which words habitually keep company with which. Collocation is not logic and cannot be reasoned out from dictionary meanings alone; it has to be learnt as whole phrases. ‘Earn’ and ‘make’ take ‘a living’; ‘gain’ takes experience, weight, access and ground; ‘win’ takes prizes, matches and elections; ‘afford’ takes the thing bought and normally sits under ‘can’ or ‘could’.

The surrounding grammar is worth as much as the vocabulary. ‘It is time’ (and its stronger forms ‘it is high time’ and ‘it is about time’) is followed either by an infinitive — it is time to go — or by a subject with a PAST tense that refers to the present: it's time you went, it's high time he paid his dues. The past form here is the unreal or subjunctive past, the same tense that appears in ‘I wish I knew’ and ‘if I were you’. It does not mean the action is over; it means the speaker thinks it is overdue.

The two facts meet in the blank. The construction tells you the verb must be a past form, which every option satisfies, and the noun ‘living’ tells you which past form the language actually uses.

This is Q1, the first item of the paper and the anchor of the ‘Fill in the blanks’ set. Part A of the EO/AO General Ability Test is the English Language section — twenty items in four sets of five, printed in English only and set in a single column. The Directions block for this set is printed once, above this question, and Q2 to Q5 print nothing but their own sentence; a candidate who skips the instructions here has none for the next four items.

What the set rewards is reading the whole sentence before looking at the options. Every option in an item like this is a real English word and each is plausible in isolation, so the choice is made by the words on either side of the blank — the noun that follows it, the preposition that follows that, the tense of the main clause. Reading the four candidates first and then hunting for a sentence to fit them is the habit that produces wrong answers here.

Key facts

‘Earn a living’ and ‘make a living’ are the two standard English collocations for supporting oneself by work; ‘earn’ means to receive money in return for labour or service.
‘It is time’ followed by a subject takes a past tense with present meaning — it's time you went, it's high time he paid — and carries the sense that the action is already overdue.
‘Afford’ takes as its object the thing whose cost is borne, and in that sense normally appears with can, could or be able to; its other sense, to provide or give, is formal.
‘Gain’ collocates with things acquired by degrees — experience, weight, access, an advantage, ground — and does not take ‘a living’ in current usage.
‘Win’ collocates with contests and stakes — a match, a prize, an election — and names a single outcome rather than a continuing occupation.
Part A of this paper is Q1 to Q20, printed in English only, and this set of five is governed by the single Directions block printed above Q1.

Four verbs, one noun — which of them takes ‘a living’ ?

earned→To receive money in return for work done. It takes ‘a living’, ‘a livelihood’, ‘wages’, ‘a salary’ as its natural objects. ‘Earn a living’ and ‘make a living’ are the two settled English collocations for supporting oneself by work.

afforded→To have enough money or time to bear the cost of something, and in that sense almost always used with can, could or be able to. Its object is the thing paid for, never the income itself — a living is what pays for things, not a thing paid for.

gained→To obtain by degrees something that adds to what you already have — gain experience, weight, access, an advantage, ground. It is not the verb English attaches to ‘a living’.

won→To obtain by victory, competition or chance — win a match, a prize, an election. What is won is a stake or a contest, and the winning is a single event rather than a continuing occupation.

The frame confirms it→‘It’s time you went out and …’ is the unreal past: after ‘it is time’ English uses a past tense with present meaning, and it carries the sense that the action is already overdue.

Study next

Verb–noun collocations tested in cloze items: earn a living, make a difference, take a decision, do business, pay attention, give an account.The ‘it is time / it is high time / it is about time’ construction and the unreal past that follows it.Other unreal-past environments: I wish, as if, as though, would rather, suppose, and the ‘if I were’ conditional.The verb ‘afford’ in both senses — bearing a cost, and providing an opportunity — and why the first is tied to modal verbs.Distinguishing near-synonyms of getting: earn, gain, win, acquire, obtain, procure, secure, and the objects each prefers.

Common traps

Choosing by dictionary meaning alone. All four options can mean ‘get’ in some sense; only one of them is the verb English uses with the noun ‘living’.
Testing the option against the blank instead of against the whole phrase. Say the noun aloud with each candidate and the set phrase announces itself.
Reading the past tense in ‘it's time you went’ as a statement about the past and then looking for a past-time meaning in the blank.
Skipping the Directions block on this item. It is printed once and governs Q1 to Q5, and the four followers carry no instructions at all.

The fill-in-the-blanks set on this paper turns on collocation and on fixed phrases rather than on hard vocabulary — the five items here run on earning a living, setting a trap, a fabric that stretches, shoulders that shake and the phrase ‘on behalf of’. Expect one item in the set to test a prepositional phrase rather than a single word, and expect the wrong options to be words of the same general meaning that simply do not keep company with the noun printed after the blank. The same collocation habit is tested again in the synonym set, where the right word has to fit the sentence as well as match the underlined word.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q2Open & attempt →

The elephant fell into a __________ the hunters had set.

(a) track
(b) trap
(c) trick
(d) trunk

Answer(b) trap

The next item of the same fill-in-the-blanks set, decided the same way — by the noun's fixed partner, a trap being something hunters set.

EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q5Open & attempt →

The bereaved mother proudly received the gallantry award _________ her brave son who had laid down his life in the recent war.

(a) in the name of
(b) in lieu of
(c) on behalf of
(d) for the sake of

Answer(c) on behalf of

The last item of this set, where the blank takes a four-word prepositional phrase rather than a single verb.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Select the most appropriate word for the blank space : It is high time the department ________ a decision on the pending applications.
- (a)takes
- (b)took
- (c)will take
- (d)has taken
Answer(b) took — after ‘it is high time’ with a subject following, English uses a past form with present meaning, so ‘took’ is required. The past tense here is the unreal past of ‘I wish I knew’, not a statement about past time, and it carries the sense that the decision is overdue.
practice — not a real PYQ
Select the most appropriate word for the blank space : Years of fieldwork had helped her ________ an insight into how the scheme actually worked.
- (a)earn
- (b)win
- (c)gain
- (d)afford
Answer(c) gain — ‘gain’ is the verb English uses for something acquired by degrees, and ‘gain an insight’ is the set phrase, alongside gain experience and gain access. ‘Earn’ needs payment for work, ‘win’ needs a contest or a stake, and ‘afford’ needs the cost of a thing to be borne.

Why