Select the option that can be used as a one-word substitute for the given group of words. A person who sells and arranges cut flowers.

Correct — C. The stem carries two jobs — sells and arranges cut flowers — and both belong to a trade, not to cultivation.

A florist is exactly that: someone whose business is selling flowers and making them up into bouquets and arrangements. The word comes from Latin flos, floris, a flower.

The word cut is doing real work in the stem. The flowers are already off the plant, so nobody in this sentence is growing anything. Option (c).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Horticulturist — A horticulturist cultivates garden crops — flowers, fruit and vegetables — as a profession or a science. The stem's flowers have already been cut.
• (b)
  Botanist — A botanist studies plants scientifically. Study is the work the word names, not selling or arranging.
• (d)
  Gardener — A gardener tends a garden by planting, weeding and watering it. Nothing in the word covers selling flowers or arranging them for a customer.

One-word substitutes for people are separated by the defining activity, and words from the same field are set against each other on purpose.

Here all four choices touch plants, so the plant is not the discriminator. Grow, study, tend and sell are.

Work through the stem clause by clause when the options cluster like this. 'Sells' rules out the botanist and the gardener at once, and 'cut' rules out the horticulturist.

Key facts

• A florist sells flowers and arranges them, usually from a shop.
• Horticulture is the cultivation of garden plants, including fruit, vegetables and flowers.
• Botany is the scientific study of plants.
• Cut flowers are flowers taken off the plant and sold for display.

Common traps

• Picking Horticulturist because it is the most technical-sounding word on the list
• Reading 'arranges' as laying out a garden rather than making up a bouquet

No directly related past PYQ was found.