SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 14 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 synonym of the given word. Rectify

(a)mar
(b)amend
(c)corrupt
(d)upset

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Rectify means to put right something that is wrong — you rectify an error, a fault, an imbalance.

Amend carries the same corrective direction: to alter something in order to improve or correct it. The two verbs also take the same kind of object — a mistake, a record, a law — which is what makes amend the word that can stand in for rectify → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
mar — Mar means to spoil or damage. It runs the other way: you mar what was sound, whereas you rectify what is already faulty.
(c)
corrupt — Corrupt means to debase or make dishonest, again a move towards the worse. It is offered because it shares the formal register of rectify, not its meaning.
(d)
upset — Upset means to disturb or overturn. Upsetting an arrangement unsettles it rather than repairing it, so it cannot replace rectify.

Concept

A bare-word synonym item gives you no sentence, so context cannot rescue you. You have to know the word's direction — whether it improves a thing or damages it.

Rectify belongs to a small family of correction verbs: rectify, amend, redress, remedy.

Direction is then the fastest filter here, because three options move a thing towards the worse (mar, corrupt, upset) and just one moves it towards the better. Where an option set splits that cleanly, the split is the question.

Amend is at its most familiar in the language of law and documents — an amended bill, an amended return — but its plain sense is simply to correct, which is why it answers a bare synonym item for rectify.

Key facts

Rectify: to put right something that is wrong, as in rectify an error.
Amend: to change something, especially a text or a law, in order to improve or correct it.
Rectify comes from Latin rectus, straight or right, the same root behind rectitude and rectangle.

Study next

Correction verbs and the objects they take: amend, redress, remedy, rectifySpotting antonyms planted inside a synonym option setLatin rect- words: rectify, rectitude, rectangle, rectilinear

Common traps

Picking mar or corrupt because they carry the same formal weight as rectify
Answering from the sound of the word rather than its direction, when three options here point towards damage

SSC asks vocabulary both bare, as here, and bound to a sentence. This paper puts a sentence-bound synonym at English Q.11 (rapturous) and bare antonyms at English Q.3 and Q.9 (all 12 Sep 2024, 16:00).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.