SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 17 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 6 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 word in bold. We’d better watch our step and not give him any excuse to harass us further.

(a)betray
(b)intimidate
(c)relish
(d)soothe

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The marked word harass means to keep pressing and troubling someone with hostile intent. Of the four options only intimidate belongs to that field, so option (b) is the replacement.

The frame decides it. Any excuse to ___ us further needs a transitive verb, a personal object and a hostile sense; intimidate supplies all three.

Further matters too. It marks the trouble as already under way and continuing, which suits a verb of sustained pressure rather than a one-off act.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
betray — Betray means to be disloyal to someone or to give away something secret. Disloyalty presupposes trust, and the sentence describes an antagonist, not a confidant.
(c)
relish — Relish means to take great pleasure in something. It carries no hostile force at all, so it cannot stand for the verb the speaker is guarding against.
(d)
soothe — Soothe means to calm or comfort. It points the opposite way, and nobody watches their step to avoid being comforted.

Concept

A synonym inside a sentence is settled by fit with the frame, not by dictionary equivalence.

Harass means to subject someone to persistent aggressive pressure. Intimidate means to frighten someone, often into compliance. They overlap in the sense of using pressure against a person, and that overlap is enough here.

Read the clause before scanning the options. Watch our step signals wariness of someone with power over the speaker, which knocks out both positive verbs at once.

Harass and intimidate are not exact equivalents: harass stresses repetition, intimidate stresses fear. SSC synonym items ask for the closest option offered, and the other three are not in the field at all.

Key facts

Harass means to subject someone to persistent, aggressive pressure or annoyance.
Intimidate means to frighten or overawe someone, often in order to force compliance.
Harass is spelt with a single r and a double s, unlike embarrass.

Study next

Near-synonyms separated by intensity: annoy, harass, persecuteChoosing the closest option when no exact synonym is on the listSentence frames that fix a verb's polarity, such as give him an excuse to

Common traps

Rejecting intimidate for not being a dictionary-exact synonym, and then having nothing left to choose.
Choosing soothe by reading the sentence as a wish rather than as a warning.

The in-sentence synonym returns at 09 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.13 of this shift, where altruistic has to be replaced inside its sentence. The bare-word form is at Q.1 and Q.14 of the same paper.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.