Select the INCORRECTLY spelt word in the given sentence. One must be confident of winning and gaining one’s goals and must face situations, disasters, trials and setbecks of life with confidence.

Correct — A. The sentence prints setbecks. The word is setbacks.

A setback is the phrasal verb set back frozen into a single noun, and a compound of that kind keeps the spelling of both parts — so the second element is spelt exactly like the word back, with an a.

English builds many nouns this way without altering either half: breakdown from break down, drawback from draw back, feedback from feed back. Option (a) is the incorrectly spelt word.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)
  Trials — Trials is the regular plural of trial, which keeps its -ial ending. Nothing in the sentence changes it, and the printed form is correct.
• (c)
  Disasters — Disasters is spelt with -aster and takes a plain -s plural. It is the longest word offered, which is the only reason it draws suspicion.
• (d)
  Confident — The adjective confident ends in -ent, and that is what the sentence prints. Its noun partner confidence, which the sentence also uses, is the form students misspell, not this one.

In this version of the spelling item the misspelling is buried in a running sentence, but the four options narrow the search completely: only those four words can be the answer.

So read the options first, then check each one against how it is built. A compound goes back to its parts, a plural to its singular, an -ent or -ence word to its partner form.

That turns a sentence-long hunt into four quick decisions.

Key facts

• A setback is a reverse or a check to progress, written as one word from the phrasal verb set back.
• Confident is the adjective and confidence the noun, both spelt with -ent- and -enc-.
• The paper prints the misspelling as setbecks, with e where back has a.

Common traps

• Reading the sentence for sense and never noticing that only the four listed words are candidates.
• Suspecting disasters because it is the longest word on the list, when its spelling is entirely regular.

No directly related past PYQ was found.