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GATE 2018 IN GA Q.1: solution and answer

GATE 2018 · INGA Q.1 · 1 mark · MCQ

“When she fell down the ______, she received many ______ but little help.”

The words that best fill the blanks in the above sentence are

  1. (A)

    stairs, stares

  2. (B)

    stairs, stairs

  3. (C)

    stares, stairs

  4. (D)

    stares, stares

See the question in the paper
GATE 2018 IN GA question 1Tap to open full size

Answer and solution

ANSWER

(A) stairs, stares. “When she fell down the stairs, she received many stares but little help.”

Official answer: ASource: Official answer key, GATE 2018 IN (IIT Guwahati)

  1. Spot the homophones. Every option is built from the same two words, which sound alike but mean different things: stairs (a flight of steps) and stares (long, fixed looks).

  2. Blank 1. A person falls down a flight of steps, so the phrase must be fell down the stairs. Nobody can fall down looks, so stares does not fit here. This rules out (C) and (D).

  3. Blank 2. After received many, the word must name something a person gets from the people around her. Received many stares means people looked at her. Nobody receives stairs, so (B) is out.

  4. Check the contrast. But little help sets what she got against what she needed: plenty of looks, hardly any help. Only stares makes this contrast work.

  5. The sentence reads: “When she fell down the stairs, she received many stares but little help.” So the answer is (A).

KEY IDEA

This is a homophone question. Stairs (steps) and stares (fixed looks) sound the same, so pick each word from its meaning. You fall down stairs, and onlookers give you stares. The word but sets the many looks against the little help she got.

WATCH OUT FOR

Picking by sound, or assuming the same word goes in both blanks (option B or D). Another slip is swapping the two words (option C). Test each blank on its own: can you fall down it, and can you receive many of it?

From the GATE 2018 IN paper. Every question of this paper · Download the full paper · All 32 Grammar & vocabulary questions, with notes

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