SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 12 September 2025, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 13 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 11 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

We doubt SSC's key on this question.

Neither Wiktionary nor Etymonline records a farmyard or pen sense of bailey, so sentence (a) does not give the word an unrelated meaning and no option holds a true homonym; the key can only be read as picking the one sentence with no castle detail, and this card follows it.

The answer below is still the option SSC's key marks, and we solve to that option.

Select the sentence containing the homonym of the highlighted word: The historian referenced a bailey in Norman military architecture.

(a)The shepherd gathered his sheep in the bailey.
(b)The bailey was reinforced with wooden palisades.
(c)The outer bailey surrounded the motte.
(d)The king’s guard patrolled the lower bailey.

Answer

Why

Correct — A. In the highlighted sentence, bailey is castle vocabulary: the walled courtyard of a Norman motte-and-bailey castle.

Sentences (b), (c) and (d) keep that sense. Palisades, the motte and a king's guard on the lower bailey all describe the same castle court.

Wiktionary and Etymonline give bailey no farmyard meaning, so (a) holds no true homonym either. See the dispute note.

The key marks the one sentence with no castle detail, a shepherd gathering his sheep. This card follows the key: option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
The bailey was reinforced with wooden palisades. — wooden palisades are the stake fences that ringed a castle bailey. The word keeps its castle meaning, so this is the same word in the same sense, not a homonym.
(c)
The outer bailey surrounded the motte. — the motte is the castle mound, and the outer bailey that surrounds it is a castle courtyard. This is the motte-and-bailey sense of the highlighted sentence itself.
(d)
The king’s guard patrolled the lower bailey. — the lower bailey, patrolled by a king's guard, is a castle courtyard again. Nothing in the sentence changes what bailey means.

Concept

A homonym is a word with the same spelling and sound as another but an unrelated meaning: a stern warning, and the stern of a ship.

In this format every option repeats the highlighted word, so the test is whether its meaning changes. Read what surrounds it in each sentence.

In a motte-and-bailey castle, the motte is the raised mound carrying the keep, and the bailey is the walled courtyard beside it, ringed by a ditch and palisade.

Wiktionary's senses of bailey: a castle's outer wall, the court inside it, a prison or court of justice in names like the Old Bailey, and a term in the motte-and-bailey fallacy.

Etymonline gives the castle and Old Bailey senses. Neither source records a farmyard or animal pen.

Nothing in (a) rules out a castle courtyard. The item works only by elimination: (b), (c) and (d) are plainly the castle sense, and (a) is the sentence with no castle detail.

Key facts

A motte-and-bailey castle pairs a keep on a raised mound (the motte) with a walled courtyard (the bailey), ringed by a ditch and palisade.
The Normans introduced the motte-and-bailey design into England and Wales.
Stern is a true homonym: strict, as in a stern warning, and the rear of a ship.

Study next

Homonyms with a nautical second sense: stern, bow, portHomographs that change pronunciation: lead, wind, tearCastle vocabulary: keep, motte, bailey, palisade

Common traps

Reading (b), (c) or (d) as a new meaning because each adds a detail, when palisades, motte and lower bailey all keep the castle sense
Hunting for the most technical-sounding sentence instead of the one whose setting departs from the highlighted sentence

The same format appears at 18 Sep 2025, 12:30, English Q.13, where a welder's mitre joint is keyed against a bishop's mitre, and at 21 Sep 2025, 16:00, English Q.19, where the stern of a ship is keyed against a stern warning.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Homonyms and confusables — all 10 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.