Select the most appropriate option to fill in the blank.

At the association’s meeting, people voted by raising _______ hands.

Question

Question

This question was previously asked in

AAI ATC Junior Executive 21 Feb 2023 Shift 2 Official Paper

Answer 1

The correct answer is 'Option 2' i.e. 'their'.

Key Points

The possessive adjective 'their' is used here to show that the hands belong to the people at the meeting.
When we're referring back to a noun or pronoun mentioned earlier in the sentence, we can use an appropriate possessive adjective. In this case, 'their' refers back to 'people'.
The use of 'their' tells us each person (or all people collectively) raised his or her own hand(s).
Here, the context is a meeting in which multiple individuals participate, making 'their' - the plural possessive adjective - the right choice to represent multiple individuals.

Therefore, the correct answer is 'Option 2' i.e. 'their'.

Additional Information

'them' (Option 1) could be used if 'hands' was mentioned earlier in the sentence. But since 'hands' is introduced here for the first time, 'their' is the appropriate possessive adjective to use.
'theirs' (Option 3) is a possessive pronoun, which can replace a noun (e.g., "The hands are theirs"). However, in this sentence, we need a possessive adjective ('their') to accompany the noun 'hands'.
'our' (Option 4) would suggest that the speaker is a part of the group of people raising hands. However, the sentence expresses a third-person point of view, thus making 'our' inappropriate here.