Select the correctly spelt word.

Correct — D. Conscientious is built root-first: the whole of conscien- from conscience, then the ending -tious.

Spell it out and the check is quick — c-o-n-s-c-i-e-n-t-i-o-u-s. The word means guided by conscience: careful, thorough, doing a job properly.

Each of the other three breaks the word in a different place, at the root or at the ending. Option (d) is the spelling that survives both tests.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Conscientous — Conscientous drops the i out of the -tious ending and leaves -tous. Adjectives in this family keep the i: conscientious, pretentious, ostentatious.
• (b)
  Conscietious — Conscietious loses the n of the root conscien-. The word is built on conscience, so that n has to survive into the adjective.
• (c)
  Conscencious — Conscencious breaks the word twice — consce- where the root wants consci-, and -cious where the ending wants -tious. Neither half matches.

SSC's spelling items cluster on long words whose ending cannot be heard.

-tious and -cious are both pronounced -shus, so pronunciation will never separate them. The decision has to come from how the word is built.

Conscientious traces to Latin conscientia, the same source as conscience, and it carries the full conscien- before adding -tious. Write the root first and add the ending second, and three of the four choices fail before you reach the last letter.

Key facts

• Conscientious is spelt c-o-n-s-c-i-e-n-t-i-o-u-s, thirteen letters, ending -tious.
• It means taking care to do work thoroughly and properly.
• The adjective keeps the full root of conscience: conscien- plus -tious.
• The adverb is conscientiously and the noun is conscientiousness.

Common traps

• Choosing by how the word looks at a glance, when all four options begin consc- and differ only in the middle.
• Assuming the -shus sound must be written -cious, when conscientious takes -tious.

No directly related past PYQ was found.