SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 8 of 100

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 10 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 most appropriate synonym of the given word. Garnish

(a)Dwindle
(b)Decorate
(c)Blemish
(d)Tarnish

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Garnish means to decorate, most often a dish — to add something for the look of it, the way coriander is added to a curry.

Decorate is the plain equivalent and matches on part of speech too: garnish and decorate are both transitive verbs.

The trap here is sound, not sense. Tarnish rhymes with garnish but means to dull or spoil a surface or a reputation, so it passes on rhyme and fails on meaning. Option (b) fails neither test.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Dwindle — Dwindle means to shrink steadily in size or number. It is intransitive and has nothing to do with adorning anything.
(c)
Blemish — Blemish means to mar or spoil with a flaw — the opposite direction from garnishing, which adds to appearance rather than damaging it.
(d)
Tarnish — Tarnish means to dull a metal's lustre, or to damage a reputation. It rhymes with garnish, which is the only reason it is on the list.

Concept

Synonym items are often built as a sound trap: one option rhymes with the question word and means something quite different.

Garnish comes from Old French garnir, to equip or furnish, and narrowed in English to decorating a dish. Tarnish is unrelated, from French ternir, to dull.

Two habits close these quickly. Match the part of speech first — a transitive verb in the stem wants a transitive verb in the answer.

Then ask whether the option adds or takes away: garnish adds, while blemish, tarnish and dwindle all subtract.

SSC often clusters synonym options by sound rather than by subject, so read all four before answering — two of these four end in -ish, exactly like the question word.

Key facts

Garnish, as a verb, means to decorate, typically a dish, with a small addition.
Garnish also has a legal sense in English — to garnish wages is to divert part of them to a creditor by court order.
Tarnish means to lose or cause to lose lustre, and figuratively to damage a reputation.
Blemish, as a verb, means to spoil the appearance or perfection of something.

Study next

Near-homophone traps in vocabulary items: garnish and tarnishVerbs of adorning: embellish, adorn, bedeck, garnishVerbs of spoiling: mar, blemish, tarnish, sully

Common traps

Picking tarnish because it rhymes with garnish.
Assuming a cooking word must have a cooking synonym and rejecting the plain word decorate.

SSC prints this item as a bare word with no sentence around it, as here.

The same bare format runs at English Q.20 in this same 09:00 shift and at 19 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.4, Q.15 and Q.19, while at 19 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.8 and Q.20 the word is underlined inside a sentence instead.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.