Read the passage carefully. Attempt Question:
At the table, a man unlike ordinary people was sitting motionless. He was a skeleton with the skin drawn tight over his bones, with long curls like a woman's and a shaggy beard. His face was yellow with an earthy tint in it, his cheeks were hollow, his back long and narrow, and the hand on which his shaggy head was propped was so thin and delicate that it was dreadful to look at it. His hair was already streaked with silver, and seeing his emaciated, aged-looking face, no one would have believed that he was only forty. He was asleep. In front of his bowed head, there lay on the table a sheet of paper on which there was something written in fine handwriting.
"Poor creature!" thought the banker, "he is asleep and most likely dreaming of the millions. And I have only to take this half-dead man, throw him on the bed, stifle him a little with the pillow, and the most conscientious expert would find no sign of a violent death. But let us first read what he has written here..."
The banker took the page from the table and read as follows:
Tomorrow at twelve o'clock, I regain my freedom and the right to associate with other men, but before I leave this room and see the sunshine, I think it necessary to say a few words to you. With a clear conscience I tell you, as before God, who beholds me, that I despise freedom and life and health, and all that in your books is called the good things of the world.
The word EMACIATED is a substitution for ___________. (Choose the right option)
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → To be lean and thin
Emaciated means extremely thin and weak, usually from illness or lack of food. The prisoner is "a skeleton with the skin drawn tight over his bones", which is what an emaciated face looks like.
Example: The rescued dog was emaciated after weeks without food.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: To look very old — Incorrect. Wrong meaning: the passage calls his face "emaciated, aged-looking": looking old is a separate word, aged-looking.
Option 2: To be very untidy — Incorrect. Wrong meaning: his shaggy beard and long curls are untidy, but emaciated is about the body being thin, not about neatness.
Option 4: Pale and weak face — Incorrect. Only partly true: emaciated says nothing about colour; its central meaning is thinness, and the passage describes his face as yellow, not pale.