SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 19 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.

No sense of tableau in Wiktionary fits a cabinet's line-up, and Etymonline traces the word to French for 'picture', so no option holds a true homonym; the key can only be read as picking the one sentence where the word cannot mean a scene or picture, 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 tableau of human suffering was etched into memory by the war artist.

(a)The group performed a silent tableau on stage.
(b)The historian examined the tableau of events after partition.
(c)The tableau included metaphorical symbols and figures.
(d)The cabinet's tableau was rearranged after the reshuffle.

Answer

Why

Correct — D. In the stem, tableau means a vivid scene or picture: the war artist's image of human suffering.

Sentences (a), (b) and (c) keep that sense: a picture posed on stage, a picture of events, a picture full of symbols and figures.

In (d), a reshuffle rearranges a cabinet's ministers, so the tableau there cannot be a scene anyone depicts. It is the sentence where the stem's meaning fails, the reading the key takes → option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
The group performed a silent tableau on stage. — a silent tableau on stage is performers holding still to form a picture. Wiktionary lists this stage sense as an extension of the picture sense, so the word keeps its meaning.
(b)
The historian examined the tableau of events after partition. — the tableau of events after partition is a vivid picture of a period, drawn by a historian instead of an artist. Same sense as the stem.
(c)
The tableau included metaphorical symbols and figures. — metaphorical symbols and figures are what a painting or staged scene contains. The tableau here is a picture, the stem's own meaning.

Concept

A homonym shares its spelling and sound with a word of unrelated meaning: the stern of a ship and a stern warning.

Tableau came into English in the 1690s from French tableau, 'picture, painting'. Wiktionary's senses include a vivid scene or picture, a stage picture held by motionless actors, and technical senses in mathematics, logic and card games.

An honest caveat. Wiktionary's senses of tableau are pictorial, theatrical or technical, and none fits a cabinet reshuffle. Etymonline traces the word to French for a picture, so strictly no option holds a true homonym.

The item works by elimination: (a), (b) and (c) are plainly pictures or scenes, and (d) is the sentence where that meaning cannot work.

Key facts

Tableau entered English in the 1690s from French tableau, 'picture, painting' (Etymonline).
A tableau vivant, French for 'living picture', has people hold still and silent to enact a scene.
A homonym shares spelling and sound with another word but has an unrelated meaning.

Study next

True homonym pairs: stern (strict) and stern (of a ship), bank (of a river) and bank (for money)Polysemy against homonymy: one word with related senses, or two unrelated words sharing a form

Common traps

Choosing (a) because a stage tableau sounds like a separate meaning, when it is the same picture, made by performers
Hunting for a dictionary-perfect homonym, when the item only works as the sentence where the stem's meaning fails

The same instruction with a true homonym is keyed at 21 Sep 2025, 16:00, English Q.19, where the stern of the ship is set against a stern warning.

At 19 Sep 2025, 09:00, English Q.13, basilica is keyed the way tableau is here: the sentence where the stem's meaning cannot work.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.