SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 23 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 7 of 97

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.

Identify the error in the following sentence. Ourselves should not boast of one’s knowledge.

(a)Ourselves
(b)knowledge
(c)boast
(d)one’s

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The faulty segment is Ourselves, sitting as the subject of the sentence.

Rule: a reflexive pronoun cannot be a subject. Ourselves, myself and themselves appear as the object of a verb or preposition, or as an emphatic tag beside a subject — never alone in the subject slot.

The slot needs the nominative form: "We should not boast of..." If the emphasis is wanted, keep both words — "We ourselves should not boast..."

Why the others are wrong

(b)
knowledge — knowledge is an ordinary uncountable noun, used correctly and in the right place. Nothing in "boast of knowledge" is faulty.
(c)
boast — boast takes the preposition "of" or "about", so "boast of" is standard. The bare form after the modal "should" is also correct.
(d)
one’s — one's is a well-formed possessive. Moving from a first-person subject to the impersonal "one" reads loosely, but a shift of person is a style fault, not a broken form.

Concept

English pronouns change shape according to the job they do. Subject: I, we, he, they. Object: me, us, him, them. Reflexive: myself, ourselves, himself, themselves.

A reflexive form has two licensed uses. It is the object that refers back to the subject ("we blame ourselves"), or it is an emphatic appositive standing next to a noun or pronoun ("we ourselves", "the minister himself").

Put it anywhere else, and above all in a bare subject slot, and the sentence is ungrammatical.

The sentence also mixes persons, moving from a first-person subject to the impersonal "one's". That is worth noticing, but it is a matter of consistency and register. The segment SSC marks is the one that breaks a rule of form.

Key facts

A reflexive pronoun cannot function as the subject of a clause.
A reflexive is licensed as an object referring back to the subject, as in "we hurt ourselves".
It is also licensed as an emphatic appositive, as in "we ourselves" or "the minister himself".
The nominative form this sentence needs is "We".

Study next

Case forms of English pronouns: nominative, accusative, reflexiveEmphatic versus reflexive uses of the -self pronounsKeeping person consistent across a sentence: we, you, one

Common traps

Accepting "Ourselves" because it sounds formal and slightly old-fashioned.
Marking "one's" instead, since the shift in person is the more visible oddity.

SSC's error-spotting items cover form faults and word-choice faults alike, and this stem does not say which is in play.

A comparative-form fault is keyed at 26 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.2 ("My colleague always works latest than me"), and a misplaced interjection at 17 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.18 ("Brr, the city view from the Eiffel Tower is amazing!").

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.