SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 11 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 9 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Select the most appropriate option to substitute the underlined segment in the given sentence. She believed she had been blamed for the mistakes of others for what happened.

(a)Made a sceptic
(b)Made a savage
(c)Made a spinster
(d)Made a scapegoat

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The segment says she was blamed for the mistakes of others, and English has one word for that person: a scapegoat.

Substituting gives "She believed she had been made a scapegoat for what happened." — the same meaning in idiomatic form, which is what the item asks for. Option (d).

The collocation is fixed as made a scapegoat, and it always carries the passive sense of blame moved from the guilty to the blameless.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Made a sceptic — A sceptic doubts claims that others accept. Doubt is not blame, and the sentence says nothing about her questioning anything.
(b)
Made a savage — Savage means brutal or fiercely violent, so made a savage would describe a change in her nature rather than blame shifted onto her.
(c)
Made a spinster — A spinster is an unmarried woman, usually one past the customary age of marrying. The word has no connection with blame.

Concept

Segment-substitution items ask you to replace a long paraphrase with the idiom that carries it, so read the underlined words as a dictionary definition.

Blamed for the mistakes of others is the standard gloss of scapegoat — a person made to bear blame that belongs elsewhere.

The word comes from the ritual described in Leviticus, in which a goat was driven into the wilderness carrying the community's sins.

The other three options are ordinary nouns for kinds of person, and none of them encodes blame at all.

The sentence as printed reads "blamed for the mistakes of others for what happened", which is clumsy on purpose — the substitution is what makes it read properly.

Key facts

A scapegoat is a person blamed for the faults or mistakes of others.
The word traces to the biblical ritual of a goat sent into the wilderness bearing the people's sins.
Sceptic means one who doubts or questions accepted claims, spelt skeptic in American English.

Study next

One-word labels for roles people are cast in: scapegoat, figurehead, whistle-blowerIdioms of blame and blamelessness: carry the can, take the rap, off the hookSubstitution items where the sentence is rewritten rather than a synonym slotted in

Common traps

Choosing sceptic because it looks the most formal of the four, without checking that doubt is not blame.
Forgetting that made a has to fit the option, since made a scapegoat is the fixed collocation.

SSC underlines a paraphrase and asks for the idiom that replaces it, and here the wrong options are all real words used in the wrong sense.

Idiom substitution also runs at 12 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.3 (break a leg) and 10 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.14 (spill the beans).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.