SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 13 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 18 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 option that can be used as a one-word substitute for the given phrase. An important person who represents his/her country in a foreign country

(a)Ambassador
(b)Amateur
(c)Anonymous
(d)Altruist

Answer

Why

Correct — A. An ambassador is the senior diplomat one country posts to another country to speak and act for it there.

The stem carries two load-bearing parts: an important person, and representation of a country abroad. Ambassador is the only word here that has an office and a posting built into its meaning.

The rest name a person's habit, a person's outlook or an unknown name — none of them says anything about a country at all.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Amateur — An amateur does something for pleasure rather than as a paid profession. It measures skill and payment, not office, and carries no sense of one country being represented in another.
(c)
Anonymous — Anonymous is an adjective meaning that a name is not disclosed. The stem asks for a word naming a person, and an unnamed source is the opposite of an official who is publicly accredited.
(d)
Altruist — An altruist puts the welfare of others before his or her own. It describes a motive, and an altruist need hold no post and cross no border.

Concept

A one-word substitute has to cover every element of the phrase, not the part that sounds most impressive.

Here the phrase has three elements: a person, official standing, and a country represented inside another country. Ambassador answers all three — it names the head of a diplomatic mission accredited to another country's government.

Test each option against the full phrase and the wrong ones fall away on the element they cannot cover: amateur on standing, anonymous on word class, altruist on the country.

SSC builds these sets from words that share an opening letter or a general "kind of person" feel. All four options here begin with A, which is the whole of the difficulty — read the phrase, not the shape of the words.

Key facts

An ambassador is the highest-ranking diplomat sent by one country to represent it in another.
An amateur takes part in an activity for pleasure rather than as a paid professional.
Anonymous is an adjective: it describes work or a person whose name is not given.
An altruist acts for the good of others at cost to himself or herself.

Study next

One-word substitutes for diplomatic and official roles: envoy, emissary, consul, attachePerson-words formed with -ist and -crat: altruist, egotist, autocrat, bureaucratChecking the word class of an option before its meaning

Common traps

Reading only "an important person" and picking whichever option sounds the grandest.
Accepting anonymous, an adjective, for a stem that must be filled by a noun.

One-word substitution runs more than once in this shift: English Q.2 asks for a person unsure about God's existence (Agnostic) and Q.17 for one who speaks less in a forum (Reticent).

The same format appears on 19 Sep 2024, 16:00 at English Q.20, where a person with supreme power is Sovereign.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.