SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 17 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 22 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.

In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. Rory Cooper was a top aide to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the up-and-coming Virginia Republican who lost a 2014 House primary. He was also a prominent Never Trumper, openly (1)______________ how awful he found the 45th president. The cause Cooper has (2)______________ himself to for the past year, though, is closer to home. He is, as he puts it in his Twitter bio, ‘Apparently Mr. Open the Schools’. A father of a fifth grader, a second grader and a kindergartner, Cooper is (3) ___________ because the public schools in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives, have not reopened. Fairfax, in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, is one of the school districts that has moved (4) ___________ toward in-person learning, and it is still not close: only in the past few weeks have students started to return to classrooms, and only about half of those eligible have opted to go back, for an (5) ________________ of two days a week.

Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank no. 2

(a)pacified
(b)isolated
(c)committed
(d)sorted

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The blank sits in a relative clause whose preposition is stranded at the end: the cause Cooper has ___ himself to. Unstrand it and the frame is 'to ___ oneself to a cause'.

committed is the verb that takes exactly that pattern — commit yourself to a cause, a plan, a deadline. It means he has bound himself to it, which the next sentences bear out with a year of campaigning to reopen schools.

The tense fits too: 'has committed' is the present perfect that 'for the past year' calls for.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
pacified — pacified means calmed or quietened, and it takes the agitated party as its object. You pacify someone, and the verb does not go on to take 'to' plus a cause.
(b)
isolated — isolated pairs with from, never with 'to' in this reflexive frame — you isolate yourself from people, not to a cause. The stranded 'to' at the end of the clause rules it out on the preposition alone.
(d)
sorted — sorted means arranged into groups, or informally dealt with. Neither sense takes a reflexive object followed by 'to', so the frame collapses.

Concept

This is a collocation blank, not a meaning blank. The clause leaves its preposition hanging — 'the cause Cooper has ___ himself to' — so the right verb is whichever one takes the pattern verb plus oneself plus to.

Commit fits. Isolate takes from. Pacify takes a plain object and stops there. Devote and dedicate would also have fitted, had they been offered, because they take the same reflexive-plus-to frame. Reading the preposition before weighing the meanings removes three options at once.

The word order is journalism, not grammar drill. A textbook would print 'the cause to which he has committed himself'; the passage strands the preposition at the end of the clause, where a hurried reader can miss it.

Key facts

Commit oneself to something means to bind oneself to it by promise or effort.
Isolate takes the preposition from, as in isolated from society.
Pacify takes a person or a group as its object, as in pacify a crowd.
In 'the cause he has committed himself to', the stranded 'to' is selected by the verb commit, and that is the clue to the blank.

Study next

Reflexive collocations: commit oneself to, devote oneself to, resign oneself to, avail oneself ofStranded prepositions in relative clauses, and how to unstrand them when testing a verbVerbs locked to a fixed preposition: depend on, insist on, isolate from, deprive of

Common traps

Choosing isolated because a year of solitary campaigning sounds lonely. The preposition decides, and you isolate yourself from, never to.
Ignoring the words after the blank. The deciding 'to' comes after 'himself', at the end of the clause.
Reading 'has committed' as a passive. It is present perfect active, with 'himself' as its object.

Preposition-locked blanks run through these passages: 17 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.24 keys 'depend on' against depend from, depend at and depend in, and 25 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.25 keys 'calling on'.

Within this passage the neighbouring blanks test a verb at Q.21, an adjective of feeling at Q.23, a superlative at Q.24 and a quantity noun at Q.25.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. Rory Cooper was a top aide to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the up-and-coming Virginia Republican who lost a 2014 House primary. He was also a prominent Never Trumper, openly (1)______________ how awful he found the 45th president. The cause Cooper has (2)______________ himself to for the past year, though, is closer to home. He is, as he puts it in his Twitter bio, ‘Apparently Mr. Open the Schools’. A father of a fifth grader, a second grader and a kindergartner, Cooper is (3) ___________ because the public schools in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives, have not reopened. Fairfax, in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, is one of the school districts that has moved (4) ___________ toward in-person learning, and it is still not close: only in the past few weeks have students started to return to classrooms, and only about half of those eligible have opted to go back, for an (5) ________________ of two days a week.