SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 20 of 99

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 option that can be used as a one-word-substitute for the given group of words. A false idea or belief

(a)Entropy
(b)Fallacy
(c)Reticence
(d)Atrophy

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The gloss is a false idea or belief, which is the primary dictionary sense of fallacy: a mistaken belief, especially one resting on an unsound argument.

Fallacy also names a defect in reasoning, which is the same idea one step on — an argument that looks valid and is not.

The remaining options name a physical measure, a wasting process and a personality trait, so none of them can hold a belief → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Entropy — Entropy is a measure of disorder or unavailable energy in a thermodynamic system, borrowed loosely for a slide into disorder. It describes a state, not a belief.
(c)
Reticence — Reticence is the habit of saying little and holding back what one thinks. It names a disposition in a person, not a proposition that happens to be false.
(d)
Atrophy — Atrophy is the wasting away of a body part or faculty through disuse. It is close to fallacy in sound and in nothing else — an easy pick if you are matching endings.

Concept

Two senses travel under the word fallacy.

In ordinary use it is a false belief held to be true. In logic it is a flawed pattern of argument, such as the appeal to authority or the false dilemma.

SSC glosses the ordinary sense here. Read the head noun of the gloss: idea or belief points at a proposition, so an option naming a physical process (entropy, atrophy) or a trait (reticence) is out before you weigh its meaning at all.

Keep three lookalikes apart. Fallacy is the false belief. Fallacious is the adjective for the argument that produces it. Fallible describes a person capable of error, not the error itself.

Key facts

Fallacy means a mistaken belief, especially one resting on an unsound argument.
In logic a fallacy is a defect in the form of an argument rather than in its subject matter.
Entropy is a thermodynamic measure of the disorder or unavailable energy of a system.
Atrophy is the wasting away of a body part or faculty through disuse.

Study next

Fallacy, fallacious and fallible — the noun, the adjective and the false friendNamed logical fallacies: ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, begging the questionConfusable abstract nouns: entropy, apathy, atrophy, antipathy

Common traps

Picking atrophy on the ending rather than the sense.
Reading false idea as deliberate deceit and reaching for a word about lying.

SSC works this word from both directions. Here the gloss keys the word; at 19 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.20 the word Fallacy is given and the synonym keyed is Error.

Read that pair together: a synonym item will accept a broad match like error, while a substitution item wants the gloss matched tightly.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.