Question

The head ________________ was annoyed to see a ____________ in the soup. The option that would best fill the blanks in the above sentence would be:

• A. chief, house fly
• B. chef, housefly
• C. chief, house-fly
• D. chef, house fly
• E. chef, house-fly

Hint:

- Watch for \textbf{fixed collocations} (e.g., “head chef”).
- Many insect names are \textbf{closed compounds}: housefly, dragonfly, mayfly.
- Use hyphens mainly for compound adjectives before nouns (e.g., “fly-infested soup”).

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

Step 1: Collocation for the first blank. The standard phrase is \(\,\)\textit{head chef}\(\,\) (the senior cook in a kitchen), not “head chief.” Hence the first blank is chef.
Step 2: Spelling of the insect. The common noun is the closed compound housefly (like “butterfly”). Hyphenated “house-fly” or the open form “house fly” are variant/less preferred in general usage. As a simple object noun, housefly is appropriate.
Step 3: Combine. “The head chef was annoyed to see a housefly in the soup.”