Among the options, “cart off” is closest in meaning to:

Concept

A phrasal verb — a verb together with its particle — behaves as a single lexical unit. Some are largely transparent and others are wholly idiomatic, so the reliable method is never to add the two words together but to look up the sense that dictionaries record for the phrase as a whole.

A “X means” item then asks for the best match among the words actually offered. When no offered word is an exact synonym, the item works as a closest-match item: keep the single word that lies inside the phrase's semantic field and can occupy the same grammatical slot, and let the setting body's official key settle the intended choice.

Application

1. Recorded sense of the whole phrase. Merriam-Webster gives “to take or drag away without ceremony or by force”; Collins gives “to carry or remove brusquely or by force”; Cambridge gives “to take someone away from a place and transport them somewhere else by using force”; Vocabulary.com gives “take away by means of a vehicle”, with the example “They carted off the old furniture.”

2. The core common to all four glosses is removal: something or someone is taken away from where it was, typically bodily and typically without ceremony.

3. Test each offered word against that core. discard also names removal — getting rid of an object by putting it out of use — and it is a verb, so it can occupy the same grammatical slot. disregard is a verb, but its action is mental, and dejected is an adjective describing a mood; neither lies in the removal field at all.

4. discard is therefore the only offered word inside the phrase's semantic field, and it is the word the official key marks.

Cross-check: how close the match is

• Be clear about how close the match actually is. discard adds the idea that the thing is unwanted, which “cart off” does not require: thieves can cart off valuable furniture without discarding it, and police cart people off to jail. Strictly, the nearest everyday equivalents are “haul away” or “carry off”, and neither is offered here.

• That gap is why “None of these” is a live tension on this item. It would be the answer if no offered word lay inside the phrase's semantic field. discard does lie inside it — it is the only offered word that names removal at all — so on a closest-match reading the blanket choice is not selected.

• The tie is settled by the setting body rather than by argument: the official TPSC final answer key for the Common Written Examination for Sub-Inspector of Excise, held on 30 April 2023, marks discard as the answer to this question, identically in all four booklet series.

Hence, as set and keyed by the commission, “cart off” means discard. For your own vocabulary work carry away the precise sense — to take or carry someone or something away, often forcibly — and remember that “discard” is the nearest of the words offered here rather than a full synonym.