SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 15 September 2025, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 10 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.

Choose the right collocation: The article offers a _____ critique of contemporary educational paradigms.

(a)thorough going
(b)through-going
(c)thorough-go
(d)go-through

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The blank needs an adjective meaning complete, attending to every detail. That adjective is thoroughgoing, built from thorough (complete, careful) + going.

Option (a) prints it as two words, 'thorough going', but it is the option with the right parts in the right order.

A thoroughgoing critique examines every part of its subject → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
through-going — Through is not thorough. Through means from one side to the other; thorough means complete and careful. A critique is praised for being thorough, so through-going misses the sense.
(c)
thorough-go — thorough-go drops the -ing. The compound is built on going, and thorough-go is not a standard English adjective, so it cannot stand before critique.
(d)
go-through — go-through reverses the parts and loses thorough, the word that carries the sense complete. It echoes the phrasal verb go through (to examine) but does not mean complete, so it cannot describe the critique.

Concept

A collocation is a pairing of words that usage has fixed: heavy rain, not strong rain. Here the pairing is thoroughgoing + critique.

Thoroughgoing is a compound adjective, thorough + going. It means attending to every detail, or complete and absolute: a thoroughgoing reform, a thoroughgoing critique.

Thorough began as a form of through, which is why the two look alike. Thoroughfare, a road that goes through, keeps the old sense.

The paper prints option (a) as two words, thorough going, with a space and no hyphen. The dictionary headword is one word, thoroughgoing.

The key still stands: (a) is the option made of thorough + going, the parts of the real adjective.

Key facts

Thoroughgoing means attending to every detail, or complete and absolute: a thoroughgoing reform.
The dictionary spelling is one word: thoroughgoing.
Thorough means complete and careful. Through means from one side to the other.
A collocation is a word pairing fixed by usage: heavy rain, not strong rain.

Study next

Look-alike words: thorough, through, though, thoughtCompound adjectives before a noun: far-reaching, long-standing, well-foundedAdjectives that collocate with critique: scathing, trenchant, searching

Common traps

Reading through-going as thorough-going, when the missing o makes it a different word
Rejecting option (a) because it is printed with a space, when it is the option built from thorough + going

The stem names the skill, Choose the right collocation, and the options rearrange thorough or through with go or going. Spotting the compound that means complete decides it.

Thorough also appears among the options for the antonym of Entire at 17 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.12. It is wrong there because thorough, like entire, leans towards complete; the key is Incomplete.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

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