NDA (I) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 7 of 150

Correct — C, 'dialogist'. An interlocutor is a person taking part in a conversation, and a dialogist is one of the speakers in a dialogue; that is the only option naming a role in a conversation rather than a job or a political label.

• (a)government officer — This is the news-report use of the word, in which an interlocutor is an official appointed to hold talks, but the word itself covers anyone who is in the conversation.
• (b)party worker — A party worker is a political label and says nothing about taking part in a conversation.
• (d)revolutionary — A revolutionary is someone who seeks radical political change, again a political label with no link to conversation.

Interlocutor comes from Latin inter- 'between' and loqui 'to speak' — the person one is speaking with — and 'dialogist' is the matching word for a participant in a dialogue.

Option (a) is where Indian candidates are most likely to slip, because newspapers here use 'interlocutor' for an official appointed to hold talks with a group. That is a use of the word, not its meaning. Reading the root — loqui, to speak — settles it. The underline covers the possessive form while the options are in the plain form, which does not change the choice.

• The root loqui gives English loquacious, eloquent, elocution, soliloquy and colloquial.
• A dialogue needs at least two speakers, while a monologue has one.
• 'Gratifying' in the sentence means pleasing or satisfying, which tells you the speaker enjoyed the other person's confusion.

• Choosing 'government officer' from the way the word is used in news reports.
• Guessing from the political flavour of the sentence rather than from the word's root.

Asked as a synonym item — choose the word closest in meaning to the underlined word.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Choose the word closest in meaning to 'loquacious'.

  • (a)silent
  • (b)talkative
  • (c)local
  • (d)logical

  Answer(b) talkative — the root loqui means to speak.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A speech in which a character speaks alone is called a

  • (a)dialogue
  • (b)monologue
  • (c)epilogue
  • (d)prologue

  Answer(b) monologue — mono- is one, and -logue is speech.