GS: Hindi / English · Language questions stay in their original language.
150 questions · 150 marks · 2 hours 30 minutes
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Correct answer: (E) None of the above
‘Beauty’ is an abstract noun used here in a general sense, so it takes no article at all—‘Beauty is a gift of God.’
Correct answer: (C) an
‘MBBS’ is pronounced ‘em-bee-bee-ess’, so the first sound is a vowel sound and the article is ‘an’.
Correct answer: (C) Leather
A grocery store sells cereals and oil, but leather is not sold there.
Correct answer: (C) Arab
There are seven continents, among them Asia and Australia. ‘Arab’ is a peninsula, not a continent.
Correct answer: (A) April
The month before May is April. June comes after May, and March is two months earlier.
Correct answer: (E) None of the above
In the order of the seasons, summer follows spring. None of the three options comes after spring, so the answer is ‘None of the above’.
Correct answer: (C) Maternal grandfather
The father of our mother is called the maternal grandfather. Saying only ‘grandfather’ does not make clear which of the two is meant.
Correct answer: (A) niece
A sister's daughter is called a niece.
Correct answer: (E) None of the above
‘भाषा’ comes from the Sanskrit root ‘भाष्’, meaning to speak. The first and third options here are printed identically, which is why the key records ‘None of the above’.
Correct answer: (C) Chandradhar Sharma Guleri
Chandradhar Sharma Guleri gave the Hindi of the earliest period the name ‘Old Hindi’.
Correct answer: (A) Svayambhu
Svayambhu is taken to be the first poet of Apabhramsha; he composed the ‘Paumachariu’.
Correct answer: (B) Shauraseni Apabhramsha
Hindi descends from Shauraseni Apabhramsha. Vedic Sanskrit and Prakrit are earlier stages, not its direct parent.
Correct answer: (A) Dhirendra Verma
‘A History of the Hindi Language’ was written by Dhirendra Verma.
Correct answer: (C) Shauraseni
Western Hindi—Khari Boli, Braj, Bundeli and the rest—grew out of Shauraseni Apabhramsha. Bihari came from Magadhi and Eastern Hindi from Ardhamagadhi.
Correct answer: (A) Priyapravास
The first epic in Khari Boli Hindi is ‘Priyapravas’ by Ayodhyasingh Upadhyay ‘Hariaudh’. ‘Ramcharitmanas’ is in Awadhi and ‘Kamayani’ came later.
Correct answer: (B) Five
Hindi is taken to have five dialect groups—Western Hindi, Eastern Hindi, Rajasthani, Bihari and Pahari.
Correct answer: (A) Adverb
‘Drop by drop’ tells how the water is dripping—the manner of the action—so it is an adverb.
Correct answer: (C) Bihari
Magahi is a dialect of the Bihari group, which also holds Maithili and Bhojpuri.
Correct answer: (A) Vidyapati
Vidyapati is the celebrated poet of Maithili, known for the Padavali and its love poetry of Radha and Krishna.
Correct answer: (B) Ramcharitmanas
The popular epic of Awadhi is Tulsidas's ‘Ramcharitmanas’. ‘Mrigavati’ and ‘Madhumalati’ are Sufi romances.
Correct answer: (D) More than one of the above
Aspirated sounds are those released with more breath. Both ‘थ’ and ‘ध’ are aspirated, so more than one option is correct. ‘य’ is a semivowel.
Correct answer: (B) Nasal sounds following a vowel
A nasal sound following a vowel is called anusvara, written with a dot (ं)—as in ‘अंक’.
Correct answer: (B) आल
‘ससुराल’ is ‘ससुर’ + ‘आल’. The suffix ‘आल’ carries a sense of place, as it does in ‘ननिहाल’.
Correct answer: (A) Tatpurusha
In a tatpurusha compound the final member is predominant, as ‘कुमार’ is in ‘राजकुमार’. In dvandva both members are, and in bahuvrihi neither—there the meaning points outside the compound.
Correct answer: (A) Side
‘टीका’ means a tilak mark, a commentary, and the betrothal rite. ‘पार्श्व’, meaning side, is not among its meanings.
Correct answer: (E) None of the above
कण (particle), चिह्न (mark) and शून्य (zero) are all meanings of ‘बिंदु’, which is not among the options.
Correct answer: (A) अ, इ
Short vowels are those that take least time to say—अ, इ, उ, ऋ. Of the pairs given only ‘अ, इ’ is wholly short; ‘ए’ and ‘ऐ’ are long.
Correct answer: (A) ख, घ
‘ख’ and ‘घ’ are aspirated, because saying them releases more breath than ‘क’ and ‘ग’.
Correct answer: (E) None of the above
Labial consonants are made with both lips—प, फ, ब, भ, म. The three pairs given belong to the palatal, retroflex and dental groups, so the answer is ‘None of the above’.
Correct answer: (C) 14 September 1949
The Constituent Assembly adopted Hindi as the official language of the Union on 14 September 1949, which is why that day is kept as Hindi Day. The Constitution itself was adopted on 26 November 1949.
Correct answer: (D) More than one of the above
A probability always lies between 0 and 1. −0.7 is negative and 1.2 is greater than one, so more than one of the values cannot be a probability.
Correct answer: (C) ₹2,500
Getting ₹100 more raised the gain from 16% to 20%, so ₹100 is 4% of the cost price. The cost price is therefore 100 × 100 ÷ 4 = ₹2,500.
Correct answer: (A) 312
Each section plants twice the class number and each class has two sections, so one class gives 4 × class number. The classes 1 to 12 add up to 78, so the total is 4 × 78 = 312 trees.
Correct answer: (C) (0, −7)
Take the point on the y-axis as (0, y) and set the two distances equal: 25 + (y − 2)² = 81 + (y + 2)². Simplifying gives 8y = −56, so y = −7 and the point is (0, −7).
Correct answer: (B) right-angled
The longest side is 20. Since 16² + 12² = 256 + 144 = 400 = 20², by the Pythagoras theorem the triangle is right-angled.
Correct answer: (A) 3.141141114…
3·141141114… neither ends nor repeats any group of digits, so it is the irrational one. The other two either terminate or recur, and so are rational.
Correct answer: (C) 10
This is an arithmetic progression with first term 50 and common difference 17·50. From 50 + (n − 1) × 17·5 = 207·5 we get n − 1 = 9, so n = 10.
Correct answer: (A) 336 cm²
The perpendicular = √(50² − 48²) = √196 = 14 cm. The area = ½ × 48 × 14 = 336 cm².
Correct answer: (C) The dry-bulb thermometer shows a higher reading than the wet-bulb thermometer
Water evaporating from the wet bulb's wick cools it, so its reading stays at or below the dry bulb's. On a rainy day the air holds more moisture, but unless it is fully saturated the dry bulb still reads higher.
Correct answer: (C) Sulphur dioxide
Sulphur dioxide comes from burning coal and causes acid rain, so it is the pollutant. Argon is an inert gas and oxygen is life-giving.
Correct answer: (A) reduction
A fall in the oxidation number means electrons have been gained, and that is reduction.
Correct answer: (B) Alpha rays
Gamma rays and X-rays are electromagnetic waves, but alpha rays are helium nuclei—particles, not waves.
Correct answer: (C) n²
In Bohr's model the radius of the nth orbit is r = 0·529 n² Å, so it is proportional to n².
Correct answer: (C) Three
In aerobic respiration carbon dioxide is released at three steps of the Krebs cycle—once as pyruvate turns into acetyl-CoA, and twice within the cycle itself.
Correct answer: (A) Nephron
The filtering unit of the kidney is the nephron; one kidney holds about a million of them.
Correct answer: (C) fast
In tachycardia the heartbeat becomes faster than normal. A slow beat is called bradycardia.
Correct answer: (B) Only 3
Chandrayaan-3 was a very important Indian mission, and both Vikram and Pragyan did their work properly—so the first two statements are wrong. India became the fourth country to land a craft on the Moon, so the third statement is correct.
Correct answer: (B) Ram Sutar
The statue of Mahatma Gandhi at the United Nations Headquarters was made by the well-known sculptor Ram Sutar, who also made the Statue of Unity.
Correct answer: (E) None of the above
The Nobel Foundation reversed its decision to invite the ambassadors of Russia, Belarus and Iran in 2023. All three were on that list, so the answer is ‘None of the above’.
Correct answer: (A) Justice Gyan Sudha Misra
In August 2023 the Supreme Court set up a panel for Manipur of Justices Gita Mittal, Shalini P. Joshi and Asha Menon. Gyan Sudha Misra was not on it.