Verbal Ability – Odd One Out – ‘Stat’ signaled something measurable

Slot – 1 – VA

‘Stat’ signaled something measurable – Video

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Q. Five sentences related to a topic are given below in a jumbled order. Four of them form a coherent and unified paragraph. Identify the odd sentence that does not go with the four. Key in the number of the option that you choose.

1. ‘Stat’ signaled something measurable, while ‘matic’ advertised free labour; but ‘tron’, above all, indicated control.
2. It was a totem of high modernism, the intellectual and cultural mode that decreed no process or phenomenon was too complex to be grasped, managed and optimized.
3. Like the heraldic shields of ancient knights, these morphemes were painted onto the names of scientific technologies to proclaim one’s history and achievements to friends and enemies alike.
4. The historian Robert Proctor at Stanford University calls the suffix ‘-tron’, along with ‘-matic’ and ‘-stat’, embodied symbols.
5. To gain the suffix was to acquire a proud and optimistic emblem of the electronic and atomic age.

Answer: 2

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Solution: It is clear that the passage is about the three morphemes, ‘stat,’ ‘matic’ and ‘tron’, their meanings and importance in the electronic and atomic age.
Let us link the sentences logically and try and find the sentence which does not link logically with the other sentences. ‘Stat’, ‘matic’ and ‘tron’ are suffixes as first mentioned in sentence 4. Therefore, sentence 4 will begin the paragraph. Sentence 1 follows sentence 4 by giving the meanings of the three suffixes.
Sentence 3 follows sentence 1 by stating that these morphemes (Stat, matic and tron) have been linked to scientific technologies to proclaim one’s history and achievements, similar to knights in ancient times wearing shields with emblems to proclaim their warrior statuses.
Sentence 5 extends this thought further by stating that to gain these suffixes (signifying different professions) was a mark of prestige in the modern era.
It is clear that sentence 2 is the odd sentence out of the paragraph. We are not sure as to what the pronoun “it” is referring to.
Secondly, it mentions that the modern age is characterized by the fact that no process or phenomenon is too complex to be understood or deciphered. Sentence 2 is completely at variance with the other sentences in the paragraph since it does not mention anything about the three suffixes (stat, matic and tron) discussed in the other sentences.
Hence, the correct answer is option 2.

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