In the following sentence, four words or phrases have been printed in bold.…
2024
In the following sentence, four words or phrases have been printed in bold. One bold part in the sentence is not acceptable in Standard English. Pick up that part and mark its number. If there are no errors in the bold parts of the sentence, mark (5) i.e. ‘No error’ as the answer.
The police broke (1) upon the robbers when (2) they were in the lonely (3) place to divide (4) their booty. No error (5)
- A.
1
- B.
2
- C.
3
- D.
4
- E.
5
Attempted by 4 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A
Concept: In Standard English, many verbs combine with a following preposition to form a fixed collocation carrying one specific, non-negotiable meaning; the verb in such a pair cannot be freely swapped for a near-synonym even when the intended sense is similar, because the resulting combination may simply not be standard usage.
Application: The intended meaning here is ‘to encounter or discover someone unexpectedly.’ The standard English collocation for that meaning is ‘came upon’ (or ‘chanced upon’), not ‘broke upon.’ ‘Broke’ does have its own idiomatic uses (e.g. ‘the news broke,’ or ‘it broke upon me’ meaning a realization dawned), but ‘broke upon [a group of people]’ to mean physically encountering them is not standard usage. So the verb ‘broke’ is the fault, and the correction is ‘The police came upon the robbers…’
Cross-check — the other marked parts:
‘upon the robbers when’ — the preposition and the time clause are both correctly used once the verb is corrected to ‘came’.
‘they were in the lonely’ — ‘were’ is correctly in the past tense to match the rest of the narrative.
‘place to divide’ — the to-infinitive ‘to divide’ correctly expresses purpose after the noun ‘place’.
‘No error’ does not apply, since the verb-choice fault in the first marked part makes the sentence unacceptable as written.
Result: the unacceptable part is (1) — ‘broke’ should be ‘came’.