In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. Earthquake is the (1)_________ breaking and displacement of substantial portions of the earth's outer rocky crust. During an earthquake, rock disturbances can cause rivers to change their flow. Landslides (2)__________ by earthquakes can cause significant destruction and loss of life. Tsunamis are a (3)_________ of damaging waves caused by large earthquakes that occur under the ocean. Earthquakes rarely directly kill anyone. Many (4)__________ and injuries are caused by falling debris and the fall of structures. The (5)_________ of an earthquake relies on how much and how far rock cracks and shifts.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 1.
- (a)abrupt
- (b)deliberate
- (c)expansive
- (d)innovative
Answer
Why
Correct — A. The gap sits between "the" and breaking and displacement, so it is an adjective slot, and the adjective has to describe how that breaking happens.
Abrupt means sudden, without warning. That is the defining property of an earthquake: the rock does not part slowly, it fails all at once.
Read the filled line back — "Earthquake is the abrupt breaking and displacement of substantial portions of the earth's outer rocky crust" — and it holds. Option (a).
Why the others are wrong
- (b)deliberate — Deliberate means done on purpose, and in a second sense slow and unhurried. Both senses fail here: the crust is not an agent that decides, and an earthquake is not leisurely.
- (c)expansive — Expansive means wide-ranging or covering a large area. Extent is already carried by substantial portions, and expansive would say nothing about the manner of the breaking.
- (d)innovative — Innovative means introducing something new. It belongs to methods and inventions, not to a physical rupture, and it leaves the sentence without a meaning.
Concept
In a passage with blanks the answer is decided by the words on either side of the gap, not by the paragraph as a whole.
Here the gap is an adjective describing a physical event. Only one option describes the manner of an event; the rest describe intention (deliberate), size (expansive) and novelty (innovative).
Abrupt is the standard word for a change that arrives without warning, and suddenness is exactly what separates a quake from the slow, continuous movement of the plates themselves.
Do not test an option against the topic. All four words could appear somewhere in a geography passage.
Test it against the slot instead: the only question is whether the word can describe the way rock breaks.
Key facts
- Abrupt means sudden and without warning, and of a person, curt.
- Deliberate carries two senses, intentional and unhurried, and neither fits an earthquake.
- In a cloze, the words on either side fix the part of speech of the gap before meaning is considered.
Study next
Common traps
- Choosing expansive because the passage mentions substantial portions.
- Filling the gap from general knowledge of earthquakes rather than from the sentence.
- Taking deliberate as a neutral word for movement that has been planned.
SSC's passage-with-blanks item numbers the gaps inside one paragraph and then asks about them one at a time, so the paragraph is worth reading whole before the first gap.
A vocabulary set of the same kind runs at 13 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.21-Q.25. The 9 Sep 2024, 09:00 set at English Q.21-Q.25 tests connectives (However, Moreover) and the 9 Sep 2024, 12:30 set at English Q.21-Q.25 tests prepositions and pronouns.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.