SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 13 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 1 of 98

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 option that can rectify the incorrectly spelt word in the following sentence. The government has ordered for the maintainance of the roads.

(a)maintainiance
(b)maintennance
(c)maintainence
(d)maintenance

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The noun built on maintain does not keep the verb whole. The verb's ai disappears: the middle syllable becomes -ten-.

maintain gives maintenance, the way sustain gives sustenance.

The ending is -ance, not -ence. Letter by letter: m-a-i-n-t-e-n-a-n-c-e → option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
maintainiance — maintainiance keeps the verb's ai and then inserts a further i before the ending. The noun keeps neither: its middle syllable is simply -ten-.
(b)
maintennance — maintennance doubles the middle n. Only one n stands between the e and the -ance ending, so this fails on a letter the ear cannot hear.
(c)
maintainence — maintainence gets both halves wrong at once: it keeps ai from the verb and then closes on -ence instead of -ance.

Concept

This is a memory item, not a rule item, and it is safer to learn it as one.

maintain and sustain both drop their ai and take -enance in the noun: maintenance, sustenance. But abstain does not follow them — its noun is abstinence, ending -ence — and detain and retain go somewhere else again, to detention and retention.

So there is no reliable rule to derive maintenance from maintain. What there is, is a small family worth memorising as a set, and a trap worth naming: the vowel you hear in the middle is a weak, colourless one, and the ear will not tell you whether to write a, e or i.

Only the spelling is in play. All four options are the same word, so read them letter by letter rather than for meaning — they differ in the middle syllable and in the final -ance or -ence.

Key facts

maintenance is spelt m-a-i-n-t-e-n-a-n-c-e — the ai of maintain does not survive into the noun.
sustain forms sustenance the same way, with e where the verb has ai.
abstain breaks the pattern: its noun is abstinence, ending in -ence.
In maintenance a single n stands between the e and the -ance ending.

Study next

Noun forms of -ain verbs: maintain and maintenance, sustain and sustenance, abstain and abstinenceThe -ance and -ence ending in frequently misspelt nouns such as existence, occurrence and perseveranceDouble-consonant spelling traps: accommodate, occurrence, embarrass, committee

Common traps

Building the noun by keeping maintain whole and bolting -ance on to the end of it
Choosing -ence because the familiar neighbour existence takes that ending
Doubling the middle n on the strength of how the word sounds

SSC hides one misspelt word inside an otherwise ordinary sentence and asks for the corrected form. In this item and the two below, the misspelling is a plausible one candidates write themselves, not an absurd one.

The same instruction runs at 23 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.7 (acommodate, keyed to accommodate) and 26 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.12 (acknowlege, keyed to acknowledge).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.