Pick out the synonym of 'ERUDITE' from the following.

Answer: C) academic. 'Erudite' means having deep learning acquired through wide reading and serious study, so it is close in meaning to scholarly, and 'academic' carries that sense of learning and scholarship.

• A) execute is wrong. It means to carry out a plan or a task, or to put a condemned person to death.
• B) expanse is wrong. It means a wide, open area of land, sky or water, and has nothing to do with knowledge.
• D) settle is wrong. It means to resolve a dispute, to sit down, or to make one's home somewhere.

The core concept is that synonym questions test vocabulary in context, and Latin roots help. 'Erudite' comes from the Latin 'eruditus', 'rudis' meaning unpolished, so an erudite person is one who has been refined by learning. This matters for Mains too, since precise vocabulary sharpens answer writing and essay expression.

Trap: aspirants pick the option that merely sounds weighty or unfamiliar, or guess from a loose association, instead of matching the meaning of the word itself.