SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 14 of 99

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.

Identify the INCORRECTLY spelt word in the following sentence. Parul is known as a rigteous and honest lady.

(a)lady
(b)honest
(c)rigteous
(d)known

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The misspelt word is rigteous. The correct spelling is righteous.

The word is built on right, and it keeps that base word whole — r-i-g-h-t — before the ending -eous. The paper's form has dropped the h, which is silent and so the easiest letter to lose.

Lady, honest and known are all spelt correctly → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
lady — Lady is spelt correctly. Its plural turns y into ies (ladies), but the singular form used in this sentence needs no change at all.
(b)
honest — Honest is spelt correctly. Its h is silent, which is why the phrase would be an honest lady, but the spelling itself is standard.
(d)
known — Known is spelt correctly — the past participle of know, keeping the silent k and adding -n to the base.

Concept

English keeps the spelling of a base word when an ending is added, even when the sound changes. Right survives intact inside righteous, so the h nobody pronounces still has to be written.

The same habit runs through a row of exam favourites: high and height, weigh and weight, eight, neighbour, sleigh. The -gh- is a fossil of a sound English stopped making, and it lives on in the spelling.

The sentence version of this item gives you four ordinary words and hides one misspelling among them, so read for the letters and not for the sense.

Righteous is pronounced RY-chuss, so nothing in the sound tells you the h is there. The spelling has to be recovered from the base word right.

Key facts

Righteous is spelt r-i-g-h-t-e-o-u-s, keeping the whole of the word right.
A silent letter survives in spelling because the base word keeps its form when an ending is added.
Honest begins with a silent h, which is why it takes an rather than a.

Study next

Silent-letter words: righteous, height, knowledge, honest, subtleSpellings that keep the base word visible, such as right to righteous and high to heightSentence-based spelling items, where the misspelling sits among ordinary words

Common traps

Dropping a silent letter because the word is written as it sounds
Marking honest as wrong because its h is not pronounced
Reading the sentence for meaning instead of checking each option letter by letter

SSC hides one misspelt word inside an otherwise ordinary sentence and lists four of its words as options, so the sense of the line never helps you.

The same item is asked on 11 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.13, where recieved puts i before e after c, and on 12 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.16, where Setbecks replaces the a of setbacks.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.