Select the option that can be used as a one-word substitute for the underlined segment. My father always tells amusing and true stories from his childhood at bedtime.

Correct — A. An anecdote is a short, entertaining account of a real incident or person, and that matches every part of the underlined segment: amusing, true, and taken from his own childhood.

The word true does the deciding. It throws out every option that names an invented story and leaves the one word that requires a real event.

The segment is plural, and the keyed option is printed plural too: My father always tells anecdotes from his childhood at bedtime.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)
  fables — Fables are short invented tales, usually with animals as characters, told to deliver a moral. The stem says the stories are true, and a fable is fiction by definition.
• (c)
  sonnets — Sonnets are poems of fourteen lines. The segment describes stories, not verse, so this option fails on form before its meaning is even weighed.
• (d)
  allegories — Allegories are narratives whose characters and events stand for a hidden moral or political meaning. They are built to carry that meaning, which makes them constructions rather than true accounts.

One-word substitutes for kinds of story are separated by two questions: is it true, and what is it for?

An anecdote is true and told for interest or amusement. A fable is invented and told to teach a moral. An allegory is invented and told to stand for something beyond itself.

A sonnet answers neither question, because it is not a story at all — it is a fixed verse form of fourteen lines.

Run the stem's adjectives through those two questions and a single word survives.

Key facts

• An anecdote is a short account of a real incident, told because it is interesting or amusing.
• A fable is a short fictional tale, often with animal characters, that ends in a moral.
• An allegory is a narrative whose surface story stands for a deeper moral or political meaning.
• A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines, a verse form rather than a kind of story.

Common traps

• Choosing Fables because the stories are told to a child at bedtime
• Overlooking true, the word that eliminates every fictional form
• Treating allegory as a loose synonym for any story with a lesson in it

No directly related past PYQ was found.