Which one of the following is the antonym of the word written in capital letters in the sentence, “I cannot comply with the QUEER regulations of your land”?

Correct — D, (d) Customary.

The ask here is for the antonym, and it is the third item in a row that asks for one. Read the task word first: the quoted sentence contains a negative of its own, ‘I cannot comply’, but that negative belongs to the speaker inside the sentence and has nothing to do with what the question wants. What the question wants is the opposite of the capitalised word.

‘Queer’ in this sentence carries its long-established general sense of odd, strange, out of the ordinary — the sense in which a rule, a smell or a coincidence can be queer. That is the sense an antonym has to reverse, and the noun it attaches to decides which reversal fits. The word is describing ‘the regulations of your land’: rules that strike a visitor as peculiar because they are not what he is used to.

‘Customary’ is the exact reversal for that noun. It means established by custom, sanctioned by long usage, what is regularly done — and custom is not merely a habit but a recognised source of rules, which is why English speaks of customary law, customary rights and customary practice, and why conditions of service settled by custom and usage are treated as binding. Regulations that are customary are the ones a land has always followed; regulations that are queer are the ones that depart from what is settled. Set them side by side — customary regulations against queer regulations — and the pair reverses cleanly, on the same dimension and in the register the noun calls for.

As at Q4 and Q5, one option on the page is a plain synonym of the tested word rather than its opposite, and it is the first word most readers would give for QUEER.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)Strange — ‘Strange’ is a synonym of the tested word, not an antonym: strange and queer are given for each other in this sense, and the sentence would mean exactly the same with either in place. It is the third time in three items that the set has offered a plain synonym — hostility at Q4, unwilling at Q5, strange here — and it is offered because it is the very word a reader supplies when asked what QUEER means. Anyone who took it has answered a synonym question that the paper stopped asking two items earlier, and the fix is not more vocabulary but a second look at the task word in the stem.
• (b)Nimble — ‘Nimble’ means quick and light in movement — nimble fingers, a nimble climber, and by extension a nimble mind that moves quickly between ideas. It measures agility, which is neither the same dimension as strangeness nor its reverse, and it attaches to bodies, movements and minds rather than to rules; ‘nimble regulations’ is not something English says. This is the outlier of the set, the option that is related to the tested word in no way at all, and its presence is a useful reminder that four options need not be four candidates: sometimes one is there only to be discarded on sight.
• (c)Everyday — The Commission’s key does not take this option, and the distinction is worth learning. ‘Everyday’, written as one word, is an adjective meaning commonplace, met with routinely — everyday clothes, an everyday occurrence — and it does stand against ‘strange’ in a general way. What it grades is how often something is encountered. Regulations, though, are not characterised by how often one meets them but by whether they rest on settled usage, and that is what ‘customary’ says; ‘customary regulations’ is idiomatic English and ‘everyday regulations’ is not. Note also that the one-word ‘everyday’ is an adjective and the two-word ‘every day’ is adverbial — he wears everyday clothes every day — and only the first can stand where the capitalised word stands.

The item is decided by matching the antonym to the noun. ‘Queer’ can be reversed in more than one direction because strangeness itself can be measured in several ways: by how often a thing is met (common, everyday, frequent), by how it compares with a standard (normal, regular, typical), and by whether it rests on established practice (customary, conventional, traditional, orthodox). All three are legitimate opposites of ‘strange’ in the abstract. Which one a question wants is settled by what the adjective is describing.

Here it is describing regulations, and rules belong to the third family. That family is worth learning as a group, because it recurs wherever a paper touches law or administration: customary, conventional, traditional, orthodox, established, settled, usual practice, and their opposites — anomalous, aberrant, irregular, unorthodox, unprecedented.

‘Custom’ is also a technical word in this context and not merely a synonym for habit. A practice followed uniformly and for long enough can harden into a rule that courts will enforce, which is what is meant by customary law and by conditions of service established by custom and usage. That is the sense that makes ‘customary’ the natural antonym of a strange regulation: it names a rule with the authority of long practice behind it.

Key facts

• In this sentence ‘queer’ carries its long-established general sense of odd or strange, which is the sense the antonym must reverse.
• ‘Customary’ means established by custom and sanctioned by long usage; it is the register of rules and practices, as in customary law, customary rights and conditions settled by custom and usage.
• Custom is a recognised source of binding practice, not merely a habit, which is why ‘customary regulations’ is idiomatic where ‘everyday regulations’ is not.
• ‘Everyday’ as one word is an adjective meaning commonplace; ‘every day’ as two words is adverbial and cannot stand in an adjective’s place.
• ‘Nimble’ measures agility of movement or of mind and has no antonymic relation to strangeness at all.
• Each item of this antonym set offers one plain synonym of the tested word — hostility at Q4, unwilling at Q5, strange here.

Common traps

• Taking ‘strange’, which is the first word most readers would give for the tested word and therefore exactly what an antonym item counts on.
• Treating the ‘cannot’ inside the quoted sentence as part of the question. The quotation belongs to a speaker; the ask is a plain positive one.
• Settling for the first option that reverses the tested word in the abstract without checking that it fits the noun the adjective describes.
• Reading ‘everyday’ as though it were the adverbial ‘every day’, which cannot occupy the position the capitalised word occupies.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is the antonym of the word written in capital letters in the sentence, “The auditor objected to the ANOMALOUS entry in the register”?

  • (a)Irregular
  • (b)Regular
  • (c)Recent
  • (d)Illegible

  Answer(b) Regular — ‘anomalous’ means departing from the rule or the standard, so its opposite is what conforms to the rule. ‘Irregular’ is a synonym of the tested word, and ‘recent’ and ‘illegible’ describe the date and the handwriting of an entry rather than its conformity.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is the antonym of the word written in capital letters in the sentence, “The committee was unwilling to accept the NOVEL procedure”?

  • (a)New
  • (b)Costly
  • (c)Established
  • (d)Simple

  Answer(c) Established — a novel procedure is one not previously used, so the opposite is one settled by prior practice. ‘New’ is a synonym of the tested word, and ‘costly’ and ‘simple’ grade expense and difficulty rather than novelty.