IPMAT Indore 2024 · Verbal Ability · Question 38
IPMAT Indore 2024 previous year question on Word Usage in Context, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.
- ADuring her summer holidays she usually went to the village to stay with her grandparents and her large extended family.
- BShe said, “I always stay awake late into the night till my daughters come home, as I worry a lot about their safety.”
- CThe ownership of the property went to the eldest son of the family, but the other siblings went to court and asked for a stay order.
- DDue to the ban on slaughter of cattle, the neglected ones often stay away, wandering into fields and eating the crops.
Answer & solution
Answer: Option D
The word being tested: stay, across its several senses.
(a) “stay with her grandparents” — to reside temporarily ✔ the commonest sense.
(b) “stay awake late into the night” — to remain in a state ✔
(c) “asked for a stay order” — the legal sense: a court order suspending proceedings ✔ a genuine and precise usage.
(d) “the neglected ones often stay away, wandering into fields and eating the crops” ✘
Why (d) fails. Stay away means to keep one’s distance; to not go near a place. But the rest of the sentence describes cattle that are wandering into fields and eating crops — that is, coming towards cultivated land, not keeping away from it.
The sentence contradicts itself. The intended word is almost certainly stray — “the neglected ones often stray, wandering into fields and eating the crops” — which fits both the wandering and the context of abandoned cattle.
Answer: Option 4
Shortcut. Read on past the tested word. The error in (d) is only visible from the clause that follows it: stay away and wandering into fields point in opposite directions.
The intended word is stray — one letter from stay, which is the whole design of the question.
Note how wide the net is cast here: (a) residence, (b) remaining in a state, (c) a legal instrument. A word having an unfamiliar technical sense does not make it wrong — many students flag (c) because they have not met a stay order. Verify by meaning, never by unfamiliarity.
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