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.

With his back to the old man, he stood at the window, fists clenched, and his shoulders _________ with his choked sobbing.

(a)shivered
(b)shook
(c)vibrated
(d)moved

Answer

Why

Correct — B, (b) shook.

‘Shake with’ is the fixed English expression for a body moved by a strong feeling, and weeping is its commonest subject: his shoulders shook with sobs, she was shaking with laughter, he shook with rage, the child was shaking with fear. The pattern is verb plus ‘with’ plus the name of the emotion or its physical sign, and the part of the body that carries it in the case of crying is almost always the shoulders. The sentence has assembled the whole picture — the turned back, the clenched fists, the choked sobbing — and the blank has to supply the one verb that finishes it.

The tense settles the form. The main verb of the sentence is ‘stood’, a simple past, and the clause joined to it by ‘and’ runs in parallel: his shoulders shook. All four options are offered in the past, so the tense does not eliminate anything; the collocation does. ‘Shook with his choked sobbing’ is English that has been written a thousand times, and none of the other three phrases has been written at all.

Notice the construction the sentence uses twice over. ‘With his back to the old man’ and ‘fists clenched’ are absolute phrases — a noun with a participle or a prepositional phrase attached, standing outside the main clause and adding circumstance to it. They are worth studying here because they are the mark of controlled narrative writing and because they explain the rhythm of the sentence: three circumstances laid down, then the one movement that gives the man away. He has turned so that his face cannot be seen and he is holding his sobs in his throat, and what betrays him is his shoulders.

Why the others are wrong

(a)shivered — To shiver is to tremble in small rapid movements, and English ties it to two causes above all: cold, and fear or dread — shivering in the wind, shivering with fright, a shiver ran down his spine. It also normally takes a whole person as its subject rather than one part of the body, so ‘his shoulders shivered’ sounds odd even before the cause is considered. Here the cause is grief held back, not chill or terror, and the movement of shoulders under suppressed sobbing is a deeper heave rather than a fine tremor. The word is close enough in meaning to catch a reader who has settled for the general idea of trembling.
(c)vibrated — To vibrate is to move rapidly to and fro about a fixed position, and it belongs to the vocabulary of physics and machinery — a string vibrates, an engine vibrates, a phone is set to vibrate, sound travels by the vibration of air. Applied to a human body in the grip of an emotion it is wrong in register and slightly absurd in picture, turning a grieving man into a mechanism. English does use it of things that quiver with feeling in a deliberately literary way, as in a voice vibrating with emotion, but that is a figure applied to sound, not the plain description of a body wanted here.
(d)moved — ‘Moved’ is not wrong in fact — shoulders that shake are certainly moving — and that is exactly why it is offered. It fails on two counts. It says far less than the sentence has already told us, so it wastes the one verb the writer had left to make the scene visible; a general word placed where a specific one belongs is a fault of writing even when it is true. And it does not take the phrase that follows: ‘moved with his choked sobbing’ is not an English construction, because ‘move with’ means to travel alongside something or to keep pace with it, as in moving with the times. ‘Was moved’ in the emotional sense is a different verb pattern altogether and would need the passive.

Concept

The item tests two things at once — the collocation ‘shake with’, and the wider principle that the specific word beats the general one when a sentence has already supplied the context.

English has a graded family of trembling verbs, and each is anchored to particular causes and particular subjects. To shake is the broad, strong movement, and it takes ‘with’ plus almost any powerful feeling: shake with laughter, with rage, with sobs, with cold, with fear. To shiver is a fine, rapid tremor, tied to cold and to dread. To quiver and to tremble are slighter still and often used of a lip, a hand or a voice. To shudder is a single convulsive movement of revulsion or horror. To vibrate belongs to objects and to sound. Learning them as a graded set, each with its typical cause attached, is what makes an item like this quick.

The second point is stylistic and is tested constantly in language papers. Where a sentence has built a picture, the blank is normally filled by the most precise word available, not the most cautious one. ‘Moved’ is true of everything that changes position and therefore tells the reader nothing new; ‘shook’ carries the size and the reason of the movement in a single syllable.

The sentence is also a small lesson in absolute constructions: ‘With his back to the old man’ and ‘fists clenched’ each attach a circumstance to the main clause without a conjunction or a finite verb.

This is the fourth item of the ‘Fill in the blanks’ set opening Part A, and it is the longest sentence in the set. The Directions were printed once over Q1 and are not repeated here.

The examiner has done something worth noticing: the sentence is a piece of narrative prose rather than an isolated statement, and the context needed to choose the verb is spread across the whole of it. The back turned to the room, the clenched fists and the phrase ‘choked sobbing’ together establish that a man is crying and trying not to be seen doing it. A candidate who reads only the words immediately around the blank — ‘his shoulders ______ with’ — has thrown away the evidence the examiner deliberately supplied.

That is the habit the whole of Part A rewards, and it costs nothing but attention: read the sentence to its full stop before looking down at the options. On items like this one the options are all plausible in the abstract and only one of them survives contact with the picture the sentence has drawn.

Key facts

‘Shake with’ is the standard pattern for a body moved by strong feeling — shake with laughter, with rage, with fear, with cold, with sobs — and shoulders are the part of the body English most often shows shaking in grief.
‘Shiver’ names a fine, rapid tremor and is tied to cold or to dread; it normally takes a whole person as subject rather than a single part of the body.
‘Vibrate’ describes rapid to-and-fro motion about a fixed point and belongs to strings, engines, machines and sound waves rather than to a human body in grief.
‘Move’ is a general word for any change of position, and ‘move with’ in English means to travel alongside or keep pace with, as in moving with the times.
An absolute construction — ‘fists clenched’, ‘with his back to the old man’ — is a noun plus a participle or a phrase, adding circumstance to the main clause without a conjunction or a finite verb.
The verb in the blank runs parallel to ‘stood’, so the whole sentence sits in the simple past.

The graded family of trembling verbs, each anchored to its own cause

shook→‘Shake with’ is the fixed pattern for a body moved by strong feeling — shake with laughter, with rage, with fear, with cold, with sobs — and shoulders are the part English most often shows shaking in grief. The sentence has already laid down the turned back, the clenched fists and the choked sobbing; the blank supplies the one movement that gives the man away.

shivered→A fine, rapid tremor, tied to cold and to dread — shivering in the wind, shivering with fright. It normally takes a whole person as its subject rather than one part of the body.

vibrated→Rapid to-and-fro motion about a fixed position, and the vocabulary of strings, engines, phones and sound waves. Applied to a man in the grip of grief it turns him into a mechanism.

moved→True but empty — shoulders that shake are certainly moving. A general word placed where a specific one belongs says less than the sentence has already said, and ‘move with’ in English means to keep pace with, as in moving with the times.

The rest of the scale→Quiver and tremble are slighter still and are used of a lip, a hand or a voice; shudder is a single convulsive movement of revulsion or horror.

Absolute constructions→‘With his back to the old man’ and ‘fists clenched’ are each a noun with a participle or phrase attached, adding circumstance to the main clause without a conjunction or a finite verb.

Study next

The graded family of trembling verbs — shake, shiver, tremble, quiver, quake, shudder — and the cause and subject each prefers.The pattern ‘verb + with + emotion’: shake with rage, tremble with fear, glow with pride, burn with shame, blush with embarrassment.Absolute constructions and participial phrases used to add circumstance: fists clenched, head bowed, the work finished, weather permitting.Choosing the specific word over the general one in cloze items, and why a true but empty option is still the wrong answer.Verbs of bodily emotion used figuratively — a voice shaking, a lip trembling, a shudder running through a crowd.

Common traps

Reading only the words next to the blank. The evidence that decides this item is spread across the whole sentence, in the turned back, the clenched fists and the choked sobbing.
Accepting an option because it is true rather than because it is right. Shoulders that shake do move, but ‘moved’ adds nothing and does not take the phrase that follows.
Treating shiver, shake and tremble as interchangeable. Each is fixed to its own causes, and shivering belongs to cold and fear rather than to grief.
Choosing the technical-sounding word. ‘Vibrated’ carries the machinery of physics into a scene of private grief and changes the tone of the whole sentence.

Cloze items built on a narrative sentence are a favourite of this paper because they let the examiner hide the deciding evidence away from the blank. Expect a set of options in which one is far too general to be useful, one belongs to a different register or a different field altogether, one names a near neighbour with the wrong cause attached, and one is the idiom. The same discrimination is asked again in the synonym set later in Part A, where the underlined word has to be replaced by the option that fits the sentence and not merely by the option that shares a dictionary gloss.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q3Open & attempt →

The dress isn't really tight. It'll ________ when you've worn it.

(a) bend
(b) expand
(c) squeeze
(d) stretch

Answer(d) stretch

The item before this one in the same set, decided the same way — four verbs of changing shape, and only one used of the thing named in the sentence.

EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q14Open & attempt →

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.

(a) preserves
(b) demolishes
(c) covers
(d) spoils

Answer(c) covers

A synonym item later in Part A that turns on the same principle in reverse: the replacement word must match the sentence’s tone, so a strongly negative option is refused.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Select the word most appropriate for the blank space : The whole hall ________ with laughter when the compere lost his notes for the third time.
- (a)shivered
- (b)vibrated
- (c)shook
- (d)quivered
Answer(c) shook — ‘shake with laughter’ belongs to the same fixed pattern as ‘shake with rage’ and ‘shoulders shook with sobs’, and it is the phrase English uses of a room or a crowd carried away by amusement. ‘Shivered’ is tied to cold and fear, ‘vibrated’ belongs to machines and sound, and ‘quivered’ names a slight tremor of a lip or a voice rather than the movement of a whole hall.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following underlined groups of words is an absolute construction rather than a finite clause ? (a) He stood at the window because his fists were clenched. (b) He stood at the window, fists clenched. (c) He stood at the window and clenched his fists. (d) He stood at the window while he clenched his fists.
- (a)He stood at the window because his fists were clenched.
- (b)He stood at the window, fists clenched.
- (c)He stood at the window and clenched his fists.
- (d)He stood at the window while he clenched his fists.
Answer(b) He stood at the window, fists clenched. — an absolute construction is a noun with a participle attached and no finite verb of its own, standing outside the main clause and supplying circumstance. The other three all contain finite verbs, joined by a conjunction: ‘because his fists were clenched’, ‘and clenched’, ‘while he clenched’.

Why