Direction: In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.

to cast iron stomach

Directions: In the following questions, sentences are given with blanks to be filled in with an appropriate word(s). Four alternatives are suggested for each question. Choose the correct alternative out of the four as your answer.

The news was _______ good to be true.

In the following passage some words have been deleted. Fill in the blanks with the help of the alternatives given. Select the most appropriate option for each number.

A no-examination policy would kill the competitive spirit among the students. It is important to encourage healthy competition in today’s times where all admissions and job recruitments are based on elimination. Also, in the total absence of examinations, (1)______ who truly deserve may not get fair (2)______, while those who need to (3)______ may not get the right (4)______. Moreover, examinations help to assess the (5)______ of teaching.

Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 1.

Choose the correct preposition:
 My younger sister was born _______ the eve of Diwali.

Read the passage carefully and give the answer of following questions.

Looking back on those days I see myself as a kind of centaur, half boy, half bike, forever wheeling down suburban streets under the poincianas, on my way to football practice or the library or to a meeting of the little group of us, girls and boys, that came together on someone's verandah in the evenings after tea.
I might come across the Professor then on his after dinner stroll; and as often as not, he would be accompanied by my father, who would stop me and demand (partly, I thought, to impress the Professor) where I was off to or where I had been; insisting, with more than his usual force, that I come home right away, with no argument I spent long hours cycling back and forth between our house and Ross McDowell or Jimmy Larwood's, my friends from school, and the Professor's house was always on the route, I was always aboard and waiting for something significant to occur, for life somehow to declare it self and catch me up I rode my bike in slow circles or figures-of-eight, took it for sprints across the gravel of the park, or simply hung motionless in the saddle, balanced and waiting.

The boy's father was trying to gain the Professor's approval, hence

Sentences of a paragraph are given below in jumbled order. Arrange the sentences in the correct order to form a meaningful and coherent paragraph.

A. They also resolved to impose restrictions on the Russian central bank's ability to access and deploy the country's 'war chest' of an estimated $630 billion in foreign exchange reserves.

B. Saturday's announcement by the US, the UK and European allies, including France and Germany, of a raft of 'further restrictive economic measures' to increase the costs on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine has just raised the risks of a more widespread economic fallout from this war.

C. The immediate impact of these moves on Russia's economy and financial markets have manifested in a sharp depreciation in the value of the Rouble.

D. With a view to further isolating Russia from the international financial system, the Western allies decided to block 'selected' Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system that banks and financial institutions use to validate and complete international payment transactions.

The question below consists of a set of labelled sentences. These sentences, when properly sequenced form a coherent paragraph. Select the most logical order of sentences from among the options.

P: All these ensure that the world we live in grows a new skin every few years.
Q: These influences do, of course, work on humankind but they have the greatest impact on that section of society which is on the threshold of discovery-discovery of the self, of life and of living.
R: The life and times of two generations cannot be identical or even similar, thanks to modern research, progress in science, faster and easier communications and even distasteful things like inflation and population explosion.
S: These changes in due course affect our thinking and influence our attitudes, expectations, behavioural patterns and values.

In the below questions, sentence/passage is split into four parts and named P, Q, R & S. These four parts are not given in their proper order. Read the sentence/passage and find out which of the four combinations is correct.

P. The man had a beautiful wife, whom he loved passionately, and never left her side if possible.
Q. One day, when he was obliged by important business to go away from her, he went to a place where all kinds of birds are sold and bought a parrot.
R. This parrot not only spoke well, but it had the gift of telling all that had been done before it.
S. He brought it home in a cage and asked his wife to put it in her room and take great care of it while he was away.