SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 24 September 2025, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 18 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 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.

Select the sentence containing the homonym of the highlighted word: The philosopher cited a rare aporia in the text.

(a)The reader encountered aporia in the Platonic dialogue.
(b)The critic interpreted aporia as a poetic device.
(c)The engineer measured the bridge’s aporia in millimeters.
(d)The aporia indicated a contradiction in logic.

Answer

Why

Correct — C. In the stem, aporia is a philosopher's term: an impasse or contradiction found in a text.

Options (a), (b) and (d) keep the word with readers, critics and logic: a Platonic dialogue, a poetic device, a contradiction.

Option (c) has an engineer measuring a bridge's aporia in millimeters. No recorded sense of aporia, whether a logical impasse or a speaker's show of doubt, is something you measure. The meaning has to change there, so the key marks option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
The reader encountered aporia in the Platonic dialogue. — A Platonic dialogue keeps aporia in philosophy, the stem's own field: a reader meeting an impasse in an argument. Same word, same sense, so no homonym.
(b)
The critic interpreted aporia as a poetic device. — A poetic device points to aporia's rhetorical sense, a speaker's show of doubt. Wiktionary lists it under the same Greek origin as the philosophical sense: a related meaning, not an unrelated word.
(d)
The aporia indicated a contradiction in logic. — A contradiction in logic restates the stem's meaning: Wiktionary defines aporia as an apparently insoluble contradiction or logical impasse. Nothing moves the word to a second meaning.

Concept

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

All four options spell aporia the same way, so spelling cannot decide. Fix what the stem's word means, then find the sentence where that meaning cannot hold.

Aporia comes from Greek aporia, 'difficulty, perplexity', built from a- 'without' and poros 'passage': literally, no way through.

Wiktionary gives aporia one origin and two related senses: a rhetorical show of doubt, and a philosophical impasse or contradiction. Neither Wiktionary nor Etymonline records a second, unrelated word spelled aporia, or any sense an engineer could measure.

Strictly, then, no option holds a true homonym. The item works by elimination: (c) is the sentence where the word can carry neither recorded sense.

Key facts

Aporia comes from Greek aporia, 'difficulty, perplexity', from a- 'without' and poros 'passage'.
In philosophy, aporia is an apparently insoluble contradiction or logical impasse, especially in a text.
In rhetoric, aporia is an expression of doubt about how to proceed.
A true homonym has an unrelated meaning: stern (strict) and stern (the rear of a ship).

Study next

Homonyms, homophones and homographs: telling the three apartPolysemy: related senses of one word, such as aporia in rhetoric and in philosophyReading a word's meaning from the nouns and verbs around it

Common traps

Picking (b) because a poetic device sounds like a new meaning, when it is aporia's rhetorical sense, a relative of the stem's meaning.
Treating 'the bridge's aporia' as a real engineering term and memorising it.

A scholarly word put in an engineer's or technician's hands is keyed the same way at 18 Sep 2025, 09:00, English Q.13 ('The engineer calibrated the hydraulic fief for flow control') and 22 Sep 2025, 09:00, English Q.18 ('The technician calibrated the breviarium using voltmeters').

For a true homonym, compare 21 Sep 2025, 16:00, English Q.19: a stern warning against the stern of a ship.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Homonyms and confusables — all 29 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.