In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. (1) _________ a letter came to inform them that Raka’s mother Tara had another breakdown and was in a nursing home in Geneva and that Raka’s grandmother Asha, (2) _________ seen another grandchild safely into the world, was flying to Switzerland to be with her, Nanda Kaul (3) _________ her lips, (4) _________ the blue sheets of paper with that distasteful sprawl (5) _________ them, and hid them in her desk.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 3.
- (a)stuck
- (b)dusted
- (c)pursed
- (d)dirt
Answer
Why
Correct — C. The blank takes her lips as its object, and the verb English fixes to that object is purse.
To purse one's lips is to press them into a tight, puckered line — the standard sign of disapproval, which is what the letter has just produced in Nanda Kaul.
The sense of the sentence confirms it: she pursed her lips, then folded the sheets away and hid them.
The past tense pursed also matches "came" and "hid" around it.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)stuck — Stuck needs a particle before it can do anything with lips — "stuck out her lips". On its own it means fastened or jammed, which is not what a face does.
- (b)dusted — Dusted means to remove dust from a surface, or to sprinkle powder over one. Neither sense has anything to do with lips or with disapproval.
- (d)dirt — Dirt is a noun. The slot needs a past-tense verb in front of the object "her lips", and dirt has no verb form to offer.
Concept
A one-word verb blank in a cloze is usually decided by collocation — which verb that particular object habitually takes — not by which verb is broadly imaginable.
English fixes several body-language verbs to one body part: you purse your lips, clench your fist, shrug your shoulders, raise an eyebrow. Swapping them sounds wrong even when the meaning is guessable.
Before weighing meaning, filter by word class. One option here is a noun, and a noun can never fill a slot that governs an object.
The mood of the paragraph is a second, independent check: Nanda Kaul finds the sprawl distasteful, hides the letter and tells nobody. A verb of displeasure fits; a verb of cleaning does not.
Key facts
- To purse one's lips is to press them tightly together, usually to show disapproval.
- As a verb, dust means to remove dust from a surface or to sprinkle powder onto one.
- Dirt is a noun and has no past-tense verb form.
- Stick needs a particle to work with a body part, as in stick out one's tongue.
Study next
Common traps
- Weighing all four options on meaning and never noticing that dirt is not a verb.
- Reading the blank without its object "her lips", which is what fixes the collocation.
Single-verb cloze blanks of this design are also set on 13 Sep 2024, 12:30 at English Q.22, where landslides are triggered by earthquakes, and on 17 Sep 2024, 16:00 at English Q.22.
In both, all four options are verbs of the same shape and only the sentence around the blank decides which sense is allowed.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.