SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 3 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 option to substitute the underlined segment in the given sentence. The betrayer of the country was at last unmasked.

(a)theist
(b)traitor
(c)truant
(d)transgressor

Answer

Why

Correct — B. A traitor is a person who betrays their own country, so the single word carries the whole underlined phrase, 'The betrayer of the country'.

The verb unmasked fits it: a traitor passes as loyal until exposed.

The test is precision, not overlap. Three options do name someone who does wrong, but traitor is the one whose meaning includes the country — option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
theist — A theist is a person who believes in the existence of God. The word is about belief, and nothing in the sentence concerns religion.
(c)
truant — A truant is a pupil who stays away from school without permission. That is an absence, not a betrayal, and it has no national dimension.
(d)
transgressor — A transgressor breaks a law or a moral rule — any rule at all. It is the nearest miss, but it never says what was betrayed, and the phrase names the country.

Concept

One-word substitution asks for the word that carries the whole phrase, not a word that merely overlaps with it.

So measure each option against every part of the phrase. 'Betrayer of the country' has two parts — the act (betraying) and the object (the country). Transgressor covers only the act; traitor covers both.

Here the near-miss option is the one that gets the act right and the object wrong, which is why you read such a phrase for its noun as carefully as for its verb.

The underlined segment is the noun phrase 'The betrayer of the country'; the rest of the sentence, including 'was at last unmasked', stays as printed.

Key facts

Traitor: a person who betrays their own country or cause.
Theist: a person who believes in the existence of God.
Truant: a pupil who stays away from school without permission.
Transgressor: a person who breaks a law or a moral code.

Study next

One-word substitutions for people: traitor, truant, transgressorBelief words: theist, atheist, agnosticChecking a substitute against both the action and the object of the phrase

Common traps

Taking transgressor because betrayal is a form of wrongdoing, and dropping 'of the country'.
Confusing theist with atheist while eliminating, and rejecting the wrong option.
Reaching for truant because it begins like traitor.

SSC sets one-word substitution as a bare definition at 13 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.2 ('a person who is unsure about God's existence', keyed Agnostic) and 23 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.6 (keyed Blasphemy).

It also embeds it, as here, in a sentence whose underlined words you replace — the same build appears at 09 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.19, where 'operative' is replaced by 'industrial'.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.