IPMAT Indore 2022 · Verbal Ability · Question 5

The idiom. To get a taste of one’s own medicine means to receive the same unpleasant treatment one has been giving others.

Why it fits. Leela is “nasty and inconsiderate with her colleagues”, and now a rude superior is treating her the same way. The sentence is built to illustrate this idiom exactly.

Why the others fail:

(a) a spoon of her own medicine — swaps taste for spoon. Not the idiom.

(c) an unpleasant medicine dose — ordinary English, not an idiom, and it loses the crucial “her own” element that carries the sense of comeuppance.

(d) a dose of bitter medicine — a real phrase, but it means facing a harsh but necessary truth or measure (as in a difficult economic policy). It lacks the reciprocity: the medicine is not hers.

Answer: Option 2

Shortcut. The reciprocity is the point, and only “her own” carries it. The sentence sets up a mirror — she is nasty, now someone is nasty to her — so the idiom must say the treatment is the same one she dispenses.

Option (d) is the thoughtful trap, because a dose of bitter medicine is genuine English. But it describes something unpleasant yet necessary, with no sense of being repaid in kind. When two real idioms compete, pick the one whose structure mirrors the sentence’s structure.

The fixed form is a taste of one’s own medicine — taste, not spoon or dose.