CAT 1999 — VARC Question 22
Directions: For each of the two questions, indicate which of the statements given with that particular question is consistent with the description of the unseasonable man in the passage below.
Unseasonableness is a tendency to do socially permissible things at the wrong time. The unseasonable man is the sort of person who comes to confide in you when you are busy. He serenades his beloved when she is ill. He asks a man who has just lost money by paying a bill for a friend to pay a bill for him. He invites a friend to go for a ride just after the friend has finished a long car trip. He is eager to offer services which are not wanted, but which cannot be politely refused. If he is present at an arbitration, he stirs up dissension between the two parties, who were really anxious to agree. Such is the unseasonable man.
Directions: In each of the following sentences, a part of the sentence is underlined. Beneath each sentence, four different ways of phrasing the underlined part are indicated. Choose the best alternative among the four.
Many of these environmentalists proclaim to save nothing less than the planet itself.
Answer & solution
- A
to save nothing lesser than
- B
that they are saving nothing lesser than
- C
to save nothing less than
that they save nothing less than
(d) is the correct answer choice.
The question tests you for the correct idiomatic structure to be used with the verb ‘proclaim.’ ‘Proclaim,’ unlike ‘claim,’ cannot be followed by a to-infinitive. It should be followed by a that-clause in this case.
Therefore, (d) is correct, while (a) and (c) are incorrect.
Though (b) correctly uses the that-clause, the present continuous tense ‘are saving’ changes the meaning.
The simple present tense ‘save’ is appropriate here to indicate a general sense. Furthermore, ‘less’ itself is a comparative (little → less → least) and need not be replaced by the double comparative ‘lesser,’ which is used only in certain standard idiomatic phrases, such as, ‘the lesser of the two evils.’