SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 23 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 17 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 bracketed word in the following sentence to fill in the blank. The mothers, who suffer from postpartum depression, feel ______ by their children. (vexed)

(a)delighted
(b)pacific
(c)annoyed
(d)recovered

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The bracketed word is vexed, which means irritated or troubled — annoyance, not sorrow and not pleasure.

Annoyed carries that sense exactly, and it also fits the frame the sentence supplies: you can feel annoyed by someone, just as you can feel vexed by them.

Option (c) therefore substitutes for vexed without altering either the meaning or the preposition the sentence already has in place.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
delighted — delighted means greatly pleased, the opposite pole from vexed, so it reverses what the sentence says instead of preserving it.
(b)
pacific — pacific as an adjective means peace-loving or calm. It describes a settled temperament, which is the reverse of being irritated.
(d)
recovered — recovered means restored to health. It reports a change of condition rather than a feeling, so it cannot stand in for an emotion word.

Concept

A synonym-substitution item asks for a word that keeps both the sense and the grammar of the bracketed word.

Vex means to irritate, annoy or trouble, and the participle vexed describes someone put out by something. Its close relatives are annoyed, irritated, irked and exasperated.

Check the frame as well. Feel plus a past participle plus by wants a word that behaves like the passive participle of a transitive verb — annoyed by, irritated by, troubled by.

The three wrong options all point away from irritation — pleased, calm, healed — so the item comes down to finding the single word that is about being put out.

Key facts

Vex means to annoy or irritate, so vexed and annoyed are close synonyms.
Pacific as an adjective means peaceful or calm, and has nothing to do with irritation.
Feel annoyed by someone keeps the same preposition as feel vexed by someone.

Study next

Synonym swaps where the preposition must survive (annoyed by, bored with, angry at)Adjectives marking degrees of irritation (irked, vexed, exasperated, incensed)Words whose proper-noun sense hides an ordinary adjective (pacific, august, spartan)

Common traps

Reading pacific as the ocean and skipping past it without testing its adjective meaning
Choosing recovered because the sentence mentions an illness, which answers the context rather than the bracketed word
Settling for any negative-sounding word instead of one that means irritated

SSC brackets a word and asks for the synonym that can fill a blank in the same sentence, so the substitute has to fit the grammar as well as the sense.

The same format is asked at 10 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.9 (misleading, mendacious) and at 9 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.8 (summarised, recapitulated).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.