Odd Sentence Out - English Naming of Numbers

CAT 2023 Slot 1 · VARC · Easy · Verbal Ability

Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

  1. In English, there is no systematic rule for the naming of numbers; after ten, we have "eleven" and "twelve" and then the teens: "thirteen", "fourteen", "fifteen" and so on.
  2. Even more confusingly, some English words invert the numbers they refer to: the word "fourteen" puts the four first, even though it appears last.
  3. It can take children a while to learn all these words, and understand that "fourteen" is different from "forty".
  4. For multiples of 10, English speakers switch to a different pattern: "twenty", "thirty", "forty" and so on.
  5. If you didn't know the word for "eleven", you would be unable to just guess it – you might come up with something like "one-teen".
Answer

3

Explanation

Sentences 1, 5, 4, and 2 describe the irregular rules and patterns of number naming in English. Sentence 3 introduces children learning these words, making it the odd sentence out.

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