SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 14 September 2025, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 13 of 95

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 13 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.

Select the sentence containing the homonym of the highlighted word: The treatise critiqued the rheme in the syntactical arrangement of propositions.

(a)The linguist isolated the rheme in the sentence structure.
(b)The rheme was pronounced with unique intonation in Tagalog.
(c)The rheme swam rapidly into the estuarine current.
(d)The poet emphasized the rheme for metrical impact.

Answer

Why

Correct — C. In the highlighted sentence rheme is a term of linguistics: the part of a sentence that gives new information about its theme. That is why a treatise can critique it in a syntactical arrangement.

Sentences (a), (b) and (d) keep that sense. In (c) the rheme swam into an estuarine current, so the word must name something that swims → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
The linguist isolated the rheme in the sentence structure. — The linguist isolates the rheme in sentence structure, which is the stem's own sense: the new-information part of a sentence. Same meaning, so not a homonym.
(b)
The rheme was pronounced with unique intonation in Tagalog. — Intonation is a feature of spoken sentences, and the rheme is part of a sentence, so it can be pronounced with a particular intonation. The Tagalog setting is still linguistics.
(d)
The poet emphasized the rheme for metrical impact. — Metrical impact puts the word in a poem, not in a new field: a poet can stress the new-information part of a line. The spelling is rheme, not rhyme.

Concept

A homonym is a word with the same form as another but an unrelated meaning. The item asks for the sentence where rheme cannot carry the stem's meaning.

In the stem, rheme is the partner of theme. In The jury delivered a verdict, the jury is the theme and delivered a verdict, the new information about it, is the rheme.

A sentence that talks about grammar, pronunciation or a poem's line keeps that sense. A sentence where the rheme swims cannot.

Wiktionary gives rheme two senses, the linguistic one and a term in Peircean semiotics, and no animal. So option (c) does not show a recorded second meaning.

It is still the defensible pick: it is the one sentence where the linguistic sense cannot apply, and the key marks it.

Key facts

Rheme (linguistics): the part of a sentence that gives new information about its theme.
Rheme is pronounced like ream, and it is a different word from rhyme.
A homonym shares a word's form but not its meaning, so the answer is the sentence where the stem's sense cannot fit.

Study next

Theme and rheme in sentence structureHomonyms, homophones and homographs: how they differTechnical words with a second, everyday sense (digest, current, stern)

Common traps

Picking (d) because a poet suggests rhyme. The paper prints rheme, and a sentence in a poem still has a theme and a rheme.
Picking (b) because Tagalog looks like a new setting. Pronunciation and intonation are still linguistics.

The same template, a rare technical word with the key marking the one sentence that moves it out of its field, is keyed at 14 Sep 2025, 09:00, English Q.13 (pauldron, set on a sea slug) and 14 Sep 2025, 12:30, English Q.13 (tripos, a ceremonial stool).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Homonyms and confusables — all 29 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.