Select the most appropriate synonym of the word in brackets to fill in the blank. He said that he lacks the ___________ to stand in a queue. (patience)

Correct — C. The bracket prints the meaning you have to match: (patience). The blank comes straight after 'the', so it needs a noun — and every option here is an abstract noun ending in -ance, so the ending decides nothing.

Meaning decides it. Endurance is the power to bear something tiresome or unpleasant without giving way, which is exactly what standing in a queue asks of a person → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  elegance — Elegance is grace or refined good taste in appearance and manner. Nothing in it touches the idea of putting up with a wait.
• (b)
  acceptance — Acceptance is agreeing to take or receive something. You can accept a long queue and still lose your temper in it, so acceptance does not carry patience's sense of bearing the delay.
• (d)
  relevance — Relevance is having a bearing on the matter in hand. It rhymes with endurance and shares its ending, which is the whole reason it is here.

A synonym-in-brackets item gives you a meaning in the bracket and a slot in the sentence, and you run two filters over the options in that order.

Grammar first: the blank follows 'the', so only a noun fits. Here that filter removes nothing — all four are abstract nouns.

Then meaning: pick the option that could replace the bracketed word in this sentence without changing what the sentence says. Only endurance carries patience's sense of putting up with delay.

Key facts

• Endurance is the ability to bear a difficult or unpleasant process without giving way.
• Patience and endurance overlap where the hardship is delay, as in waiting without giving up.
• All four options end in -ance, so the shared ending is not a clue to the answer.

Common traps

• Choosing acceptance because you accept a long queue, when acceptance is agreeing to something rather than bearing it.
• Treating the shared -ance ending as a sign that the answer must be there.
• Matching on sound instead of sense, which is what relevance is planted to catch.

No directly related past PYQ was found.