SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 16 September 2025, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 6 of 75

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.

Choose the correct one-word substitution for: ‘One who abandons his religious faith’.

(a)Renegade
(b)Atheist
(c)Heretic
(d)Apostate

Answer

Why

Correct — D. An apostate is a person who abandons, or renounces, their religious faith. The act is called apostasy.

The definition's deciding verb is abandons: the person once held the faith and has left it. Apostate is the word defined by exactly that act → option (d).

Apostasy comes from Greek apostasis, 'defection'.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Renegade — Renegade can mean one who deserts a faith, but in current use it names anyone who betrays a cause, party or country. Apostate is the word tied to religious faith.
(b)
Atheist — Atheist describes a lack of belief in God. It names a position, not the act of leaving a faith, and someone can be an atheist without ever having held one.
(c)
Heretic — A heretic holds beliefs contrary to his religion's orthodox teaching. He dissents from inside the faith, whereas an apostate has left it.

Concept

One-word substitution items reward knowing the fine distinctions between neighbouring words. Here all four describe a person's relation to a religion or a cause.

An atheist does not believe in God.
A heretic holds views that depart from his religion's doctrine.
An apostate abandons the faith altogether.
A renegade deserts and betrays a cause or group.

The definition's verb, abandons, picks apostate.

Renegade is the closest distractor. Dictionaries still record a sense of it as one who deserts a faith, so the overlap is real. In current use it covers any cause, party or country, while apostate is the word defined by abandoning religious faith.

Key facts

An apostate is a person who renounces a religious or political belief.
Apostasy is the act of abandoning one's faith.
A heretic holds beliefs contrary to orthodox doctrine, and heresy is such a belief.
An atheist is a person who does not believe in God.

Study next

Belief words tested as one-word substitutes, such as agnostic, theist and infidelThe act and group nouns of religious dissent: apostasy, heresy and schism

Common traps

Choosing Atheist because an apostate may end up without belief, when the definition turns on the act of abandoning
Choosing Renegade from its general sense of desertion, without checking which word is tied to religious faith

Here a person-word is defined in one clause, with neighbours in meaning as distractors.

24 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.10 keys Atheist for 'A person who does not believe in God'.

In this paper, 16 Sep 2025, 16:00, English Q.7 offers Apostasy as a wrong option for a formal split within a religious organization.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: One-word substitution — all 125 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.