Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow. We were walking…
2024
Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.
We were walking across the garden when my daughter spotted a cluster of familiar red flowers. She pulled me to one side and then, looking excitedly at me as though she had a secret to share, she pulled me down to her height and whispered in my ears. I shot up straight almost as soon as she had finished her sentence. With my mouth ajar, I was about to tell her that it was probably not a good idea to do so when I was transported to the time when I was around her age.
It had been a rather long day from school and I was dead tired. I was walking along the pathway that was lined with many ixora plants when my friend grabbed me by the arm. Before I could do anything, he gleefully plucked a single flower from the cluster and showed it to me. Unimpressed, I was not about to be swayed by a puny flower and was about to admonish him when he turned the flower upside down to show me a tiny almost invisible thread-like thing that protruded out from its stalk.
He pulled the faint yellowish thread and right at the end of it, a tiny drop of nectar appeared. At least, that was what I think it was, as it was really quite sweet. That day we raided the ixora plants. We really had a lot of fun. I could still taste the sweetness till today. My daughter’s urgent tug brought me back to reality. I turned to my daughter and decided that she too needed to know the joy of tasting sweet nectar from beautiful blooms.
‘I was about to admonish him ....’.
The underlined word can be replaced by the word -
- A.
appreciate
- B.
reprimand
- C.
refuse
- D.
cajole
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Concept: In a contextual-synonym question, the underlined word must first be assigned its core dictionary meaning, and that meaning must then be checked against the narrative situation around it before it is matched to an option — a word can have several senses, and only the sense that fits the surrounding action is the one being tested.
Application: "Admonish" denotes speaking firmly to someone about a fault, or warning/scolding them mildly to correct their behaviour. In the passage, the narrator is "unimpressed" and "not about to be swayed by a puny flower" when the friend plucks it and shows it off; the narrator is on the verge of finding fault with the friend's action, right before the friend reveals the flower's hidden nectar thread. This is exactly the situation of firmly warning or scolding someone for something they have just done, which is the sense carried by "reprimand".
Cross-check (by value against each distractor): "appreciate" denotes recognising something positively, which is the opposite attitude to the narrator's unimpressed, fault-finding reaction. "Refuse" denotes declining to accept or allow something, which does not describe verbally correcting someone's behaviour. "Cajole" denotes persuading someone through flattery or gentle coaxing, which is the opposite of a corrective, scolding tone.
Result: Only "reprimand" carries the warn/scold-for-a-fault sense that "admonish" carries in this context, so it is the correct replacement.