Select the most appropriate option to substitute the underlined word segment in the given sentence. Her thinning grey hair was hanging on her bony forehead.
- (a)urging ahead
- (b)straggling over
- (c)sinking from
- (d)falling about
Answer
Why
Correct — B. The segment being replaced is the two-word phrase hanging on, and every option offers a verb plus its preposition. Both halves have to fit.
Straggle is the verb English keeps for hair that spreads out unevenly and untidily — exactly what thinning grey hair does.
The preposition settles the rest: hair lies over a forehead, across the surface of it, giving "Her thinning grey hair was straggling over her bony forehead" → option (b).
Why the others are wrong
- (a)urging ahead — Urge needs someone to push forward — you urge a person on, or urge them to act. Hair urges nothing, and it leaves "her bony forehead" sitting as an object the verb cannot take.
- (c)sinking from — From points away from the forehead. Sinking from her forehead would mean the hair is dropping off it, while the sentence describes hair resting across it.
- (d)falling about — About means around, on every side. It suits hair falling about the shoulders or the face, but a forehead is a single flat surface that hair lies over, not around.
Concept
Substitute-the-segment items often turn on a verb-plus-preposition pair, not on the verb alone.
Test the two halves separately. First ask which verb names the action — here an uneven, untidy spread, which is straggle.
Then ask which preposition the following noun demands. A forehead is a surface being covered, so the phrase needs over.
An option can carry a believable verb and still fail on its preposition, which is what makes these four look closer than they are.
The underline is not preserved in a candidate response sheet, but all four options replace the same slot, so the segment in question is hanging on.
Note that "hanging on" is not ungrammatical. The instruction asks for the most appropriate substitute, not for a correction of an error.
Key facts
- Straggle means to grow or spread out in an irregular, untidy way.
- Hair straggles over a forehead, where over marks the surface being covered.
- Fall about, as an idiom, means to laugh uncontrollably.
Study next
Common traps
- Judging the verb and skipping the preposition it arrives with.
- Rejecting the key because the original phrase is not itself wrong.
- Taking fall about as a neutral synonym of hang.
Particle choice decides the same task at 13 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.13 (put on → put off) and 11 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.19 (laid down → laid out).
The same substitution task runs at English Q.8 and Q.15 of this sitting, one on a single word, one on a verb tense.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.