Select the most appropriate option to substitute the underlined segment in the given sentence. The ship launched out on a journey by water or sea of discovery.
- (a)voyage
- (b)verso
- (c)rendezvous
- (d)vespers
Answer
Why
Correct — A. The underlined words are a definition, not an error: a journey by water or sea. The single word that means exactly that is voyage.
The sentence becomes The ship launched out on a voyage of discovery, which is the ordinary collocation and keeps the of-phrase that follows.
Option (a) is also the one option of the four that names a kind of journey at all.
Why the others are wrong
- (b)verso — Verso is a page, not a journey — the left-hand page of an open book, or the reverse side of a leaf or a coin.
- (c)rendezvous — Rendezvous is a meeting arranged for a set time and place. It can name the meeting point too, but never the travelling itself.
- (d)vespers — Vespers is the evening prayer service of the Christian day. Nothing in the word touches ships, sea or travel.
Concept
This is a one-word-substitution item wearing the clothes of a substitution question. The underlined stretch is a dictionary definition dropped into a sentence, and the task is to collapse it into the word it defines.
Voyage is specifically a long journey by sea, and by extension by air or through space.
Read the four options for their semantic field before anything else. Three of them here belong to books, appointments and church services, so vocabulary decides the item and grammar decides nothing.
The stem's own phrase, a journey by water or sea, is redundant English. That redundancy is the clue that the underlined segment is a definition rather than a mistake.
Key facts
- A voyage is a long journey, especially one made by sea.
- Verso is the left-hand page of an open book, and recto is the right-hand page.
- A rendezvous is a meeting arranged for a particular time and place.
- Vespers is the evening prayer service in the Christian liturgical day.
Study next
Common traps
- Choosing rendezvous because a ship setting out sounds like a planned appointment
- Hunting for a grammatical fault in the underlined words when the item is pure vocabulary
The definition can be underlined inside a sentence, as here, or printed on its own as a plain one-word substitute.
The plain form is at English Q.6 of this shift ('One who eats human flesh', keyed Cannibal) and at 18 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.3 ('One who eats the flesh of his own species', also keyed Cannibal) — same format, different vocabulary.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.