Creating an unpleasant situation

NDA (I) 2018 GAT Q28: Devil’s

Q: What is the answer to NDA (I) 2018 GAT Q28?

B. Correct — B, To present a counter argument. A devil's advocate is someone who argues the opposite side of a case, often a side they do not personally hold, so that the case can be tested properly. The point of the role is the counter argument itself, which is what option (b) names.

NDA (I) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 28 of 150

Question text verified against the official NDA question paper.

Devil’s advocate

(a)A dangerous person
(b)To present a counter argument
(c)Very argumentative person
(d)Creating an unpleasant situation

Answer

Why

Correct — B, To present a counter argument. A devil's advocate is someone who argues the opposite side of a case, often a side they do not personally hold, so that the case can be tested properly. The point of the role is the counter argument itself, which is what option (b) names.

Why the others are wrong

(a)A dangerous person — This is the word 'devil' read at face value. The phrase carries no suggestion of danger or wickedness; a devil's advocate is usually being helpful, by making a proposal prove itself.
(c)Very argumentative person — An argumentative person contradicts by habit and for its own sake. A devil's advocate takes the opposing side deliberately and for a purpose, and may well agree with the view being attacked.
(d)Creating an unpleasant situation — The phrase names a way of testing an argument, not a way of souring a room. Nothing in it points to bad feeling.

Concept

An idiom item on 'devil's advocate', a person who debates from a viewpoint they may not actually hold in order to test how strong it is.

Three of the four options are shades of nastiness — danger, quarrelsomeness, unpleasantness — and all three come from reading the word 'devil' literally. Only one option describes an act of reasoning, and that is the one the phrase actually means. The usual full form is 'to play devil's advocate', which shows that it names a part someone chooses to take rather than a character they have.

Key facts

Wiktionary defines it as 'one who debates from a viewpoint which one may not actually hold, usually to determine its validity or simply for the sake of argument'.
The phrase is a translation of the Latin advocatus diaboli, a popular title from the sixteenth century for the officer who handled a canonisation case in the Catholic Church.
In that older sense it named a canon lawyer appointed to argue against the canonisation of the proposed candidate, so that any objection would be heard before a decision was taken.
The everyday use keeps that idea exactly — the opposing case is put on purpose so that the proposal is tested rather than waved through.

Study next

Idioms whose sense comes from an institutional practice rather than a picturePhrases borrowed from Latin into everyday EnglishIdioms about argument and debate — beg the question, straw man, split hairsRefusing the emotional colour of a word when it sits inside an idiom

Common traps

Letting the word 'devil' colour the whole phrase and choosing an option about danger or bad temper.
Confusing a role taken up on purpose with a permanent trait of character.

Asked as an idiom item where three options play on the connotation of one word in the phrase and only one states its actual sense.

Related PYQs

NDA_GAT_2018_II_Q402018Open & attempt →

To fish in troubled waters

(a) to borrow money
(b) to steal belongings of
(c) to get benefit in bad situation
(d) to extend a helping hand

Answer(c) to get benefit in bad situation

Both items punish a literal reading. There the options invite you to picture actual fishing and actual theft; here the word 'devil' invites you to picture a dangerous man. In each case the correct option describes what the speaker is doing with an argument or a situation, not what the words picture.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the meaning of the phrase — to play devil's advocate
- (a)to support a friend in trouble
- (b)to argue the opposite side in order to test a case
- (c)to break the rules deliberately
- (d)to defend a criminal in court
Answer(b) to argue the opposite side in order to test a case.
practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the meaning of the phrase — to split hairs
- (a)to quarrel violently
- (b)to argue over trifling distinctions
- (c)to divide work equally
- (d)to change one's opinion often
Answer(b) to argue over trifling distinctions.