Select the option that can be used as a one-word substitute for the given group of words. Failing to give proper care and attention

Correct — D. Lax means not strict or careful enough — slack about a duty you are meant to attend to.

The definition turns on a shortfall of diligence: care and attention are owed, and they are not given. That is what lax names, so option (d) is the substitute.

You meet it as lax security, lax discipline, a lax supervisor — the standard exists and is simply not being kept up.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Wild — Wild means uncontrolled or untamed. It describes something with no restraint of its own, not a person who owes care and withholds it.
• (b)
  Cautious — Cautious runs the opposite way — it means taking care to avoid risk, which is exactly the attention the phrase says is missing.
• (c)
  Provident — Provident means making careful provision for the future, so it too describes foresight and care rather than the failure of it.

One-word substitution asks you to compress a definition without losing its direction. Many of these items are settled by polarity alone.

Decide first whether the phrase describes the presence or the absence of a quality, then discard every option that leans the wrong way.

Here the quality is diligence and the phrase reports its absence. Cautious and provident both assert diligence, so neither can be right whatever else they mean. That leaves wild and lax, and only lax is about a neglected duty rather than an absent restraint.

Key facts

• Lax means insufficiently strict or careful, said of rules, discipline or a person's attention to duty.
• Provident means showing foresight and providing for the future, and its opposite is improvident.
• Cautious describes care taken against risk, which is the presence of attention rather than its failure.

Common traps

• Reading the phrase as carelessness in general and picking wild, which is about lack of restraint rather than lack of attention.
• Choosing cautious because the phrase contains the word care, when the phrase reports care withheld, not care taken.

No directly related past PYQ was found.