SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 11 of 99

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 underlined group of words. Humour that describes the weaknesses of the other person is itself a crime among peer groups.

(a)Satire
(b)Attire
(c)A curse
(d)A joke

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Satire is humour that exposes someone's faults or follies — ridicule with a critical purpose. That is precisely what the underlined words describe.

The definition has two halves, and satire carries both: it is humour, and its target is a weakness.

It is also a single word, which the stem demands. Substitute it and the sentence still stands: Satire is itself a crime among peer groups.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Attire — Attire means clothing or dress. It is a near-rhyme of the answer and nothing more — nothing in the underlined words concerns what anyone wears.
(c)
A curse — A curse is a wish for harm to fall on someone. There is no humour in it at all, so it fails the first half of the definition before the weakness half is even reached.
(d)
A joke — A joke need not attack anybody. The underlined phrase specifies humour aimed at a person's weaknesses, and that target is exactly what a joke does not have to carry.

Concept

A one-word substitute item hands you a definition and asks for the single word that carries all of it. Test every clause of the definition against the candidate word, not just the opening one.

Here the definition has two clauses: it is humour, and it describes the weaknesses of a person. Satire meets both — it is the form of writing that ridicules vice or folly in order to expose it.

A joke meets the first clause alone. A curse meets neither.

The sentence built around the underlined phrase — that such humour is itself a crime among peer groups — is the stem's framing and does not bear on what the words mean. The substitution is decided by the underlined segment alone.

Key facts

Satire uses humour, irony or ridicule to expose faults, especially in people or institutions.
Attire means clothing or dress and has no connection with humour.
Satire aims its humour at a fault or a folly, which is the target a joke need not have.

Study next

One-word substitutes for kinds of humour: satire, parody, irony, sarcasmOne-word substitutes built on a negative prefix, such as invincible for that which cannot be conqueredNear-rhymes that are unrelated in meaning, such as satire and attire

Common traps

Choosing A joke because the definition opens with humour and reading no further
Picking Attire on sound alone when scanning quickly
Reading the sentence's claim that such humour is a crime as part of the phrase to be substituted

SSC sets this either way — the definition printed on its own, or underlined inside a sentence as here — and then offers one exact word beside loose paraphrases.

One-word substitutes are also asked at 12 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.18 (Invincible, for that which cannot be conquered) and at 9 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.16 (Anecdote).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.