SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 15 September 2025, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 14 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.

Select the sentence containing the homonym of the highlighted word: The monk carried a carved crosier into the sanctuary.

(a)The florist added white crosiers to the bouquet.
(b)The bishop’s crosier gleamed under the candlelight.
(c)The museum displayed a gilded 14th-century crosier.
(d)The abbot’s ceremonial crosier was stolen.

Answer

Why

Correct — A. In the given sentence, crosier is the hooked staff, shaped like a shepherd's crook, that bishops and abbots carry as a sign of office.

A homonym is the same word in a different sense. Option (a) puts crosiers in a florist's bouquet, so there the word takes its plant sense: the coiled young frond of a fern, named for its crook shape → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
The bishop’s crosier gleamed under the candlelight. — The bishop's crosier is the same staff of office as the monk's. The meaning matches the highlighted word exactly, so this is the same sense, not a homonym.
(c)
The museum displayed a gilded 14th-century crosier. — A gilded 14th-century crosier in a museum is still the ceremonial staff, simply an old one on display. A new setting is not a new meaning.
(d)
The abbot’s ceremonial crosier was stolen. — The abbot's ceremonial crosier is the staff again: abbots carry crosiers as bishops do. Same meaning as in the given sentence, so not the homonym.

Concept

Homonyms share a spelling but differ in meaning: the bank of a river and a bank for money.

Here three options use crosier in the given sense, the staff, and one does not. Look for the change of meaning, not the change of setting.

Crosier, also spelt crozier, has two senses: the curved staff of a bishop or abbot, and the tightly coiled tip of a young fern frond, whose curl resembles the head of that staff.

The fern sense is named after the staff, for its crook shape, so strictly this is one word with two senses. The question uses homonym in the looser sense of same spelling, different meaning, and the key follows that.

Key facts

Crosier (also crozier) is the hooked staff a bishop or abbot carries as a sign of office.
Crosier also names the coiled tip of a young fern frond, also called a fiddlehead.
In a homonym question, look for a change of meaning, not a change of setting.

Study next

Church words with a second sense: mitre, a bishop's headdress and a joint cut at an angleHomonyms, homophones and homographs: how the three differ

Common traps

Picking the museum sentence because its setting is unusual, though its crosier is still the staff
Rejecting option (a) because crosiers seem out of place in a bouquet, when that shift is the clue

The same format, a highlighted word followed by four sentences, appears at 18 Sep 2025, 12:30, English Q.13: a bishop's mitre is set against a welder's mitre joint, and the joint is keyed.

At 12 Sep 2025, 16:00, English Q.13, a bailey in Norman military architecture is set against a shepherd's bailey for sheep, keyed as the homonym.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

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