SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 6 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 most appropriate synonym of the bracketed word in the following sentence to fill in the blank. During Covid times, many organisations made ________(sentimental) appeals to raise funds for migrant workers.

(a)practical
(b)mawkish
(c)cynical
(d)sincere

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The blank takes a synonym of the bracketed word, so the whole test is whether an option means sentimental.

Mawkish means sentimental to excess, in a cloying and faintly embarrassing way. Option (b) is the one word on the list that lies on the sentiment axis at all.

The rest describe the appeals on axes the bracket never mentions: businesslike, distrustful, honest. None of those is a shade of feeling on display.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
practical — Practical means concerned with results and usefulness. That is the opposite pole from sentimental, so it cannot substitute for the bracketed word.
(c)
cynical — Cynical means distrusting other people's motives, or exploiting a situation without scruple. It names an attitude towards sincerity, not sentiment itself.
(d)
sincere — Sincere means honest in feeling and free from pretence. It is emotional but on the wrong axis: sincerity is about truthfulness, sentimentality is about excess of feeling.

Concept

A bracketed-word item asks which option could replace the bracketed word in that slot. Meaning decides it, and how plausible the resulting sentence sounds does not.

Sentimental means governed by feeling rather than reason, especially soft or nostalgic feeling.

Mawkish is its intensified, disapproving form, sentimental in a way that overdoes it. The other options move to different axes altogether, usefulness, suspicion and honesty.

There is a register gap worth naming. Sentimental is neutral to mildly critical, while mawkish is openly disapproving, so mawkish is a heavier word than the bracket strictly asks for.

SSC synonym items take the nearest word available, and no neutral synonym such as emotional or nostalgic appears among the options.

Key facts

Mawkish means excessively or sickeningly sentimental.
Cynical means believing that people act from selfish motives, which is an attitude rather than a display of feeling.
In a bracketed-word item the bracketed word is removed and the chosen option has to stand in the blank.

Study next

Intensified or pejorative synonyms, such as mawkish for sentimental and garrulous for talkativeThe vocabulary of excess feeling: maudlin, saccharine and cloyingBracketed-word items where a near-opposite is planted among the options

Common traps

Choosing Sincere because the appeals sound genuine, when the bracket asks about sentiment and not honesty
Rejecting Mawkish because it sounds negative while the sentence sounds sympathetic

The bracketed-word synonym is a recurring English format. It also appears at 9 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.8, where summarised is keyed recapitulated, and at 10 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.9, where misleading is keyed mendacious.

Both go the same way as this one. The bracket sets the meaning, and the option matching it wins even when it is the rarer or heavier word.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.