SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 20 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 underlined word. Our university is affiliated with various institutes all over the world.

(a)disparate
(b)unalike
(c)diverse
(d)allied

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Affiliated means formally attached to a larger or partner body, and the preposition with in the sentence carries that sense of a standing connection.

Allied keeps it: allied institutes are institutes joined to one another by a formal tie.

Read the sentence back with option (d) — Our university is allied with various institutes all over the world — and neither the grammar nor the meaning shifts.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
disparate — Disparate means essentially different, belonging to different kinds. It measures the gap between things, where affiliated reports a link between them — the opposite relation.
(b)
unalike — Unalike means not similar. Two bodies can be entirely unalike and still be affiliated, so likeness is simply not what the underlined word is reporting.
(c)
diverse — Diverse means varied, and it tempts because various is already standing beside the underlined word. But it describes the institutes themselves, not the university's connection to them.

Concept

To affiliate is to attach a smaller or junior body to a larger one, or to join two bodies formally. A college is affiliated to a university, and an association may be affiliated with a federation.

The word reports a relationship, not a resemblance. That is the line the wrong options cross: disparate and unalike both measure how far two things are from being alike, and diverse measures how varied a set is.

Allied is the option about connection — allies are parties bound together for a shared purpose, and allied fields or allied bodies are ones formally linked.

Affiliated takes both to and with — a college affiliated to a university, a body affiliated with a federation. The preposition changes nothing about the sense a synonym has to match.

Key facts

Affiliated means formally attached or connected to another body.
Allied means joined or associated, which is why it substitutes here.
Diverse and unalike describe variety and dissimilarity, a different relation altogether.

Study next

Association vocabulary: allied, affiliated, federated, associated, subsidiaryDifference vocabulary: disparate, unalike, heterogeneous, divergentPrepositions after connection words: affiliated to or with, allied with, associated with

Common traps

Picking the option that echoes a nearby word, here various pulling you towards diverse
Treating affiliated as a comment on similarity rather than on connection
Reading allied only in its wartime sense and rejecting it for an academic sentence

The sentence is there to steer the sense, and here one wrong option is built out of a word already printed in it — various feeds diverse.

Synonyms in a sentence are also asked at 26 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.9, where frugal keys Thrifty, and a bare-word synonym at 25 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.12, where Derogatory keys Insulting.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.