IPMAT Indore 2024 · Verbal Ability · Question 40

IPMAT Indore 2024 previous year question on Word Usage in Context, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.

Word Usage in ContextVocabularyMultiple choiceMedium
One of the statements below contains a word used incorrectly or inappropriately. Choose the option which has the incorrect or inappropriate usage of the word.
  1. A
    The sound of laughter and loud music from the neighbour’s house disturbed his train of thought as he was writing his farewell speech.
  2. B
    If you really want to see the landscape and the scenic countryside, it is better to take a train or go by road, rather than by plane.
  3. C
    By following the train of blood on the platform the police located the body of a young woman who had been brutally stabbed.
  4. D
    My friend has picked up a stray dog from the street and is now looking for somebody to train and domesticate the animal.
Pick an option, then check.
Answer & solution

Answer: Option C

The word being tested: train, in its various senses.

(a) “train of thought” — a fixed idiom for a connected sequence of ideas ✔

(b) “take a train” — the railway sense ✔

(c) “the train of blood on the platform” ✘

(d) “train and domesticate the animal” — to teach ✔

Why (c) fails. Train can mean a trailing series — a train of followers, the train of a wedding gown, a train of thought. But a mark left on the ground that is followed to find something is a trail, not a train.

The idiom is fixed: police follow a trail of blood. “Train of blood” is not English.

Note the deliberate placement of platform in that sentence — the railway association is bait, designed to make “train” feel natural where it is wrong.

Answer: Option 3

Shortcut. The question is a trail/train swap, one letter apart. The collocation is absolute: blood, footprints and clues leave a trail; thoughts, gowns and followers come in a train.

Spot the misdirection. Putting the word platform in the same sentence makes the railway sense feel live, but the noun is doing a completely different job there.

A good general check for these six questions (Q80–Q85): every one is built on a near-identical pair — callus/callous, diffuse/defuse, stay/stray, proscribe/prescribe, train/trail. When you spot the tested word, ask what word it is one letter away from. That question alone finds the answer in most cases.

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