Public service is not merely something that occupies the hours you are doing it, but invades all your life and experience and affects them in one way or the other.

Correct — C, (c) covers.

The underlined word is ‘invades’ and the Directions over Q11 ask for the word nearest in meaning to it. ‘Invade’ has a second, entirely standard sense beside the military one: to spread over or into something and take possession of it — weeds invaded the flower beds, the smell of cooking invaded the whole house, doubts invaded his mind. That sense is close to permeating or extending over the whole of a thing, and the option that carries it here is ‘covers’, in the sense of extending over and taking in the whole of something: the report covers the entire period, the syllabus covers three subjects, the policy covers every employee.

The sentence’s own construction is what proves it. ‘Public service is NOT MERELY something that occupies the hours you are doing it, BUT invades all your life and experience.’ The frame ‘not merely X but Y’ makes Y an enlargement of X, not a contradiction of it. X is ‘occupies the hours’ — a statement about extent, about how much of your time is taken up. The word in the underlined position has therefore to be a bigger statement of extent: it takes in not only the working hours but the whole of a life. ‘Covers all your life and experience’ is exactly that.

What the frame rules out is a word of condemnation. The sentence is a claim about the reach of public service, not a complaint about it, and the closing words — ‘affects them in one way or the other’ — are studiedly neutral. Two of the options offered are strongly negative and would turn the sentence into an attack on public service, which is not what the printed sentence says. Fixing the direction of the argument before choosing is what this item is really testing.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)preserves — ‘Preserve’ means to keep something safe from harm or decay, or to maintain it in its existing state — preserve a monument, preserve order, preserve one’s health, preserve fruit. It contains no idea of spreading at all, which is the core of the underlined word, and it moves in the opposite direction: preserving is holding a thing as it is, while invading is entering it and taking it over. Substituted into the sentence it would claim that public service protects the whole of your life, a pleasant thought that the sentence never expresses and that the contrast with ‘occupies the hours’ cannot support.
• (b)demolishes — ‘Demolish’ is to pull down or destroy completely — demolish a building, demolish an argument. It is the strongest word in the set and the furthest from the sense wanted. An invasion in the military sense may end in destruction, but that is a consequence and not the meaning of the word, and in the extended sense the printed sentence uses there is no destruction at all: a smell that invades a house destroys nothing. Substituted here it would make the sentence say that public service wrecks your life and experience, which contradicts the neutral closing clause about affecting them in one way or the other.
• (d)spoils — ‘Spoil’ is to damage or impair the quality of something — spoil the view, spoil a holiday, spoil a child by indulgence — and food that goes bad is said to spoil. Like ‘demolishes’ it imports a judgement the sentence does not make, and it is the more tempting of the two because it is milder and because ‘invade’ can sound unwelcome. But the test in a synonym item is replacement, and the sentence is describing how far public service reaches into a life, not passing a verdict on the result. Choosing a word by its emotional colour instead of by its meaning is the specific error this option is placed here to catch.

Two things are being tested at once: the extended sense of a word most candidates know only in its literal use, and the ability to read the logical frame of a sentence.

On the vocabulary. Many strong physical verbs in English have a quieter extended sense that examiners like to use. ‘Invade’ literally means to enter a country with an armed force; extended, it means to spread into or over something and pervade it — hence privacy that is invaded, a mind invaded by doubt, a room invaded by light. ‘Flood’, ‘swamp’, ‘storm’, ‘besiege’, ‘penetrate’ and ‘overrun’ all work the same way. Recognising that a word is being used in its extended sense is usually just a matter of noticing that its literal subject is impossible: public service cannot invade a country.

On the frame. ‘Not merely A but B’ is a correlative construction of enlargement. It concedes A and then asserts something larger, so B must be of the same kind as A and greater. The related frames behave the same way: not only … but also, not just … but, less a matter of … than of. A candidate who reads the frame first knows the shape of the missing word before considering any option: it must extend the idea of occupying time to something wider.

Note also that the ‘not’ in this sentence belongs to the sentence under test. It is part of the material, not an instruction to look for a negative answer.

Key facts

• Beside its military sense, ‘invade’ means to spread over or into something and pervade it — weeds invade a garden, doubts invade the mind, a smell invades a house.
• ‘Cover’ in the relevant sense means to extend over and take in the whole of something: a report covers a period, a policy covers every employee, a syllabus covers three subjects.
• ‘Not merely A but B’ is a frame of enlargement: it concedes A and asserts something of the same kind but greater, so B must extend A rather than contradict it.
• The related frames behave the same way — not only … but also, not just … but — and all of them fix the shape of the missing word before any option is read.
• ‘Preserve’ means to keep safe or maintain unchanged, and contains no idea of spreading; ‘demolish’ means to destroy completely; ‘spoil’ means to impair quality.
• The word ‘not’ in this printed sentence belongs to the sentence being tested and is not a direction to the candidate.

Common traps

• Taking the literal military sense of ‘invade’ and then looking for a word about attack or destruction. The subject of the verb here is public service, which settles that the extended sense is meant.
• Choosing by emotional colour. ‘Spoils’ and ‘demolishes’ both sound like what an invasion does, and neither is what the sentence claims.
• Ignoring the frame. ‘Not merely occupies the hours but ______ all your life’ requires a word of greater extent, and that requirement alone selects the answer.
• Reading the ‘not’ in the sentence as part of the instruction. It belongs to the material being tested.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Select the option that is nearest in meaning to the underlined word : A smell of damp earth invaded the room as soon as the first rain fell.

  • (a)attacked
  • (b)pervaded
  • (c)cleared
  • (d)escaped

  Answer(b) pervaded — in its extended sense ‘invade’ means to spread into and through something, and ‘pervade’ names that spreading exactly, so the sentence keeps its meaning when the substitution is made. ‘Attacked’ takes the literal military sense that a smell cannot have, while ‘cleared’ and ‘escaped’ describe movement out of the room rather than through it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following sentences uses the frame ‘not merely … but’ correctly to enlarge the first idea rather than to contradict it ?

  • (a)The scheme is not merely popular but unpopular in the districts.
  • (b)The scheme is not merely a relief measure but a permanent guarantee of work.
  • (c)The scheme is not merely announced but it was announced last year.
  • (d)The scheme is not merely useful and it is also useful.

  Answer(b) The scheme is not merely a relief measure but a permanent guarantee of work. — the frame concedes the smaller description and then asserts a larger one of the same kind, which is what enlargement means. Sentence (a) contradicts rather than enlarges, (c) restates the same fact with a change of tense, and (d) repeats itself and drops the conjunction the frame requires.