SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 22 September 2025, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 9 of 98

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.

In the given passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage intently and choose the most appropriate option to fill in each blank:
Global sustainability discourse has not so much evolved as ossified into a lexicon of managerial (1) _____—terms engineered more for reputational lubrication than ecological redress. What was once a moral reckoning with planetary precarity now traffics in dashboards and metrics, calibrated less to redistribute power than to launder it. Words like “resilience,” ”stakeholder engagement,” and “net-zero” populate position papers, their meanings stretched until they acquire the elasticity of (2) _____.In this semantic economy, language ceases to be revelatory and becomes performative. Reports teeter on euphemism; declarations bristle with procedural piety. Crises are not named; they are (3) _____ into ‘developmental challenges.’ The grammar of suffering is bleached, even as the facts remain uncompromising. What emerges is not truth, but a choreography of credibility—an affective simulation of care. Meanwhile, epistemic asymmetries persist: indigenous knowledge is (4) _____ as “local insight,” offered just enough space to decorate, never to reorient. Environmental justice, once confrontational, now wears a diplomatic smile, folded neatly into intergovernmental communiqués. If sustainability is to escape the orbit of self-congratulation, it must surrender its obsession with optics and inhabit the discomfort of history. Anything less is not stewardship—it is semantic (5) _____ masquerading as progress.

What should come in the place of blank number (1)?

(a)artifacts
(b)lubricants
(c)monologues
(d)alignments

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The dash after the blank defines it. The blank is terms engineered more for reputational lubrication than ecological redress.

So the missing noun names words whose job is to lubricate: to reduce friction and smooth things over for an organisation's reputation.

A lubricant is something that lessens friction or difficulty. A lexicon of managerial lubricants is a vocabulary built to keep things running smoothly → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
artifacts — Artifacts are objects made by people, typically of historical or cultural interest. They do nothing to ease friction, and the dash says these terms exist for lubrication.
(c)
monologues — Monologues are long speeches by one speaker. The dash calls the blank terms, single words and phrases such as resilience and net-zero, not speeches.
(d)
alignments — Alignments are arrangements in a line, or agreements between parties. The passage is about words that smooth over reputations, and alignment names no such easing function.

Concept

In a cloze passage the words around the blank decide it. Here a dash follows the blank and restates it, so the phrase after the dash defines the missing word.

That phrase says the terms were engineered for reputational lubrication. The matching noun must name something that eases friction, and lubricants is that word, used figuratively.

The passage keeps up the same charge against this vocabulary: Reports teeter on euphemism; declarations bristle with procedural piety.

The sentence gives its own answer away. Lubrication appears a few words after the blank, and lubricants is the option built on the same root.

Key facts

A lubricant is something that lessens friction or difficulty, literally in a machine or figuratively in a process.
A dash can introduce a phrase that explains or restates what comes just before it.
A lexicon is the vocabulary of a person, a language or a branch of knowledge.
To ossify is to turn into bone, and figuratively to become rigid and stop developing.

Study next

Figurative uses of mechanical words, such as lubricate, grease the wheels and frictionReading a phrase after a dash or colon as a definition of the word before it

Common traps

Choosing artifacts because 'managerial artifacts' matches the passage's abstract tone, without testing it against the dash
Reading the dash as the start of a new idea rather than a restatement of the blank

Blanks (2) to (5) of this passage are English Q.10 to Q.13 in this shift, keyed rhetoric, domesticated, tokenized and camouflage.

A passage cloze whose clause after the blank defines it is 20 Sep 2025, 09:00, English Q.9: a (1) ___ temporality 'in which the present is neither a continuity of the past nor a stable projection of the future', keyed disjunctive.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

In the given passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage intently and choose the most appropriate option to fill in each blank:
Global sustainability discourse has not so much evolved as ossified into a lexicon of managerial (1) _____—terms engineered more for reputational lubrication than ecological redress. What was once a moral reckoning with planetary precarity now traffics in dashboards and metrics, calibrated less to redistribute power than to launder it. Words like “resilience,” ”stakeholder engagement,” and “net-zero” populate position papers, their meanings stretched until they acquire the elasticity of (2) _____.In this semantic economy, language ceases to be revelatory and becomes performative. Reports teeter on euphemism; declarations bristle with procedural piety. Crises are not named; they are (3) _____ into ‘developmental challenges.’ The grammar of suffering is bleached, even as the facts remain uncompromising. What emerges is not truth, but a choreography of credibility—an affective simulation of care. Meanwhile, epistemic asymmetries persist: indigenous knowledge is (4) _____ as “local insight,” offered just enough space to decorate, never to reorient. Environmental justice, once confrontational, now wears a diplomatic smile, folded neatly into intergovernmental communiqués. If sustainability is to escape the orbit of self-congratulation, it must surrender its obsession with optics and inhabit the discomfort of history. Anything less is not stewardship—it is semantic (5) _____ masquerading as progress.