SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 24 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 11 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. Cascade

(a)Criticise
(b)Arcade
(c)Waterfall
(d)Garden

Answer

Why

Correct — C. A cascade is a waterfall — usually a small one, or one of a series dropping over rocks in stages.

The verb keeps the same picture: water, hair or light cascades when it falls or pours downward in quantity.

Waterfall is the only choice that names falling water, so option (c) is the synonym.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Criticise — Castigate, not cascade, is the word that means to criticise severely. The two are look-alikes and nothing more.
(b)
Arcade — Arcade rhymes with cascade but means a covered walk lined with arches or shops. Sound is the trap here.
(d)
Garden — A garden may contain an ornamental cascade, but the word names the falling water itself, not the ground it sits in.

Concept

A bare synonym item gives you no sentence to steer by, so the safeguard is to recall a phrase you have actually met the word in — 'the stream fell in a series of cascades', 'her hair cascaded down her back'.

Both senses, noun and verb, share one image: something falling in quantity from a height. Options built on rhyme (arcade) or on a similar spelling (castigate) collapse as soon as that image is in mind.

Cascade is also used figuratively for anything that arrives in a rush — a cascade of complaints, a cascade of errors. That extended use still turns on the same idea of falling in quantity, so it does not compete with the keyed sense.

Key facts

Cascade as a noun is a waterfall, often a small one or one of a series dropping over rocks.
As a verb it means to fall or pour downward in quantity, as in hair cascading over the shoulders.
Arcade means a covered passage lined with arches or shops, and is unrelated to cascade.

Study next

Water vocabulary for synonym sets: torrent, rapids, deluge, cataractLook-alike traps in vocabulary: cascade and castigate, ingenious and ingenuousVerb senses of concrete nouns, such as to cascade, to flood, to stream

Common traps

Picking Arcade because it rhymes with the question word.
Reading cascade as castigate and choosing Criticise.

SSC asks synonyms both ways: the bare word, as here and at 9 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.14 (Abundant), and a word underlined inside a sentence, as at Q.5 of this shift (indispensable).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.