SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 10 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 INCORRECTLY spelt word.

(a)Privilege
(b)Accommodate
(c)Mischievious
(d)Millennium

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The word is spelt mischievous — three syllables, mis-chie-vous. Option (c) prints Mischievious, with an extra i wedged in before the ending, and that spelling does not exist.

The slip is imported from the way many speakers say the word, and from the pull of adjectives like devious and previous.

But mischievous is mischief with -ous on the end, and the f-to-v swap is the only change that ending makes. No fourth syllable is added.

The other three words are printed correctly, so option (c) is the one to mark.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Privilege — Privilege is printed correctly. The usual error is inserting a d — priviledge — and the paper does not make it here, so this is not the misspelt word.
(b)
Accommodate — Accommodate is printed correctly, with two c's and two m's. It is one of the most-misspelt words in English, but all four consonants are in place in option (b).
(d)
Millennium — Millennium is printed correctly, with two l's and two n's — from Latin mille (thousand) and annus (year). The common slip drops one n, and this option does not.

Concept

SSC's spelling items are a recognition test, not a rules test. You are shown four words that all look plausible and asked which one a dictionary would reject.

The words are drawn from the standard hard-spelling ground: doubled consonants (accommodate, millennium), a letter people insert that is not there (privilege), and endings that speech distorts (mischievous).

The quickest method is to say each word to yourself in syllables and count them. Mis-chie-vous has three. Once you hear only three, the fourth syllable printed in option (c) becomes visible.

The stem asks for the INCORRECTLY spelt word, so the option you mark is the wrong spelling, not the right one. A hurried reading reverses this and marks a correctly spelt word.

Key facts

The correct spelling is mischievous, with no i between the v and the ous.
Accommodate takes two c's and two m's.
Millennium takes two l's and two n's, from Latin mille plus annus.
Privilege contains no d.

Study next

Doubled-consonant spellings: accommodate, occurrence, embarrass, harassmentWords whose pronunciation misleads the spelling: mischievous, grievous, pronunciationThe -cede, -ceed and -sede endings: precede, proceed, supersede

Common traps

Marking a correctly spelt word because the word INCORRECTLY in the stem was read too fast.
Accepting Mischievious because it matches how the word is usually said aloud.

SSC repeats this stem across shifts and reuses the same word pool. The identical misspelling Mischievious is keyed again on 18 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.10, where Accommodate again sits in the set as a correctly spelt decoy.
The sentence-framed version, which asks for the correct spelling of a misspelt word, is English Q.1 of this same shift.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.