Select the correctly spelt word to fill in the blank. My grandmother ________________ the preparation of every festival celebration in my house.

Correct — B. The word is initiates, from Latin initium, a beginning. The prefix is in-, not en-, and the syllable after it is -it-, so the first two vowels are both i: i-n-i-t-i-a-t-e-s.

Option (b) is the spelling that keeps both. All four choices are pronounced alike, so the ear decides nothing here — the written form has to be recalled.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  inetiates — inetiates keeps the correct in- prefix but changes the stem vowel to e. The stem is init-, from initium, so an -et- spelling has no source.
• (c)
  enitiates — enitiates has the right stem but the wrong prefix. En- is a real English prefix in enable and enclose, but this verb is built on Latin in-.
• (d)
  enetiates — enetiates gets prefix and stem wrong at once, so it is the furthest from the dictionary form and the first choice most candidates strike out.

SSC spelling items rarely test rare words. They take an ordinary word and print three phonetic distortions beside it, so the item rewards a stored visual image of the word rather than an attempt to sound it out.

Initiate means to begin something or set a process going. Its family runs initiation, initiative and initiator, and every member keeps the same in-i-ti- opening.

Fix the family once and the whole set of variants collapses.

Key facts

• Initiate comes from Latin initium, meaning a beginning.
• The correct spelling carries i in each of the first two syllables: in-i-ti-ate.
• Initiation, initiative and initiator all keep the same in-i-ti- opening.

Common traps

• Trying to sound the word out when all four options are pronounced identically
• Picking an en- spelling because the first syllable is reduced in speech and offers no clue

No directly related past PYQ was found.