SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 2 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 option that can be used as a one-word substitute for the given group of words. An order of law requiring people to remain indoors

(a)Curfew
(b)Check in
(c)Restriction
(d)Limit

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The definition has three parts: it is an order of law, it binds people generally, and it keeps them indoors.

Only curfew carries all three. The word names the official order itself — typically one that requires people to stay inside between stated hours — rather than the feeling of being restricted.

That exact match on every element of the definition is what makes option (a) the one-word substitute.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Check in — Check in is what you do on reaching a hotel desk or an airport counter. It is a registration you carry out yourself, not an order imposed on you by law.
(c)
Restriction — Restriction is any limit on freedom, from a diet to a speed cap. It names the general class and not the specific legal order that confines people indoors, so it is too wide.
(d)
Limit — Limit is a boundary or a maximum quantity. It says nothing about legal authority and nothing about staying indoors, and it is a word of measurement rather than of command.

Concept

A one-word substitute rewards the option that matches every element of the definition, not the one that feels close.

Break the phrase into conditions and test each option against all of them. Here the conditions are legal authority, general application and confinement indoors.

Curfew is that word exactly. Its exam neighbours are built the same way: an embargo is an official ban on trade, a moratorium an authorised pause, a quarantine an enforced period of isolation.

Curfew reached English from Old French cuevrefeu, literally cover fire — the evening bell that told townspeople to damp their hearth fires for the night. The modern sense keeps the fixed hour and the compulsion and drops the fire.

Key facts

Curfew names the order itself, not the state of being confined by it.
The word comes from Old French cuevrefeu, cover the fire, the bell that closed the day.
An embargo is an official ban on trade, built on the same order-from-authority sense.

Study next

One-word substitutes for orders and bans (embargo, moratorium, injunction, quarantine)Legal-process vocabulary SSC reuses (amnesty, extradition, arbitration)Splitting a definition into conditions before reading the options

Common traps

Choosing Restriction because it is the broadest option that is not actually wrong.
Reading Check in as confinement because both involve being made to be somewhere.
Skipping the words order of law, which is the element only Curfew satisfies.

One-word substitutes come up more than once in a single English section: this shift sets the type again at English Q.6 (Dipsomania) and Q.9 (are inaccessible). The same item runs at 9 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.9 (Contentious) and 9 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.8 (Stoic).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.