Some sick immigrants were detained at the airport.
- (a)settlers
- (b)natives
- (c)vagabonds
- (d)foreigners
Answer
Why
Correct — B, (b) natives.
The underlined word is ‘immigrants’ and the Directions over this set ask for the opposite. An immigrant is a person who comes INTO a country from outside in order to settle there. Set against that, a native is a person born in the place and belonging to it by birth rather than by arrival. Incomer against born-and-belonging is a real reversal, and among the four words offered it is the only one.
It is worth being clear about why the textbook pair is not on offer. The strict counterpart of ‘immigrant’ is ‘emigrant’ — the same movement described from the other end, a person LEAVING a country. English marks the difference with the prefixes: ‘im-’ from Latin in, into, and ‘e-’ from ex, out of, so an emigrant from Kerala becomes an immigrant in the country he reaches. The examiner has not offered ‘emigrant’, so the candidate has to fall back on the next reversal available, which is the contrast between those who have come in and those who were always there.
The sentence gives the setting that makes ‘natives’ the natural contrary: people are being detained at an airport, that is, at the border, where the distinction that matters is between those who belong to the country and those arriving to enter it.
One caution about the word itself, since a card a student learns from should not teach a usage that will embarrass him. ‘Native’ as a noun for the people of a country carries a colonial flavour in modern English and is avoided in careful writing about people; as an adjective — a native of Bhopal, native speakers, native place — it is entirely ordinary.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)settlers — A settler is a person who goes to live in a new country or a new region, especially one not previously occupied by his own community. That is a near neighbour of ‘immigrant’, not an opposite: both words describe somebody arriving from elsewhere and staying. The difference between them is one of emphasis. ‘Immigrant’ looks at the crossing of a frontier into an existing country, and is the word of law and of border control; ‘settler’ looks at the taking up of land and the making of a home, and is the word of history and of colonisation. An option that means very nearly the same as the underlined word is the standard check in this set on whether the instruction to find the OPPOSITE was read.
- (c)vagabonds — A vagabond is a wanderer with no settled home and no regular work, and the word carries the old legal flavour of vagrancy. The axis it sits on is rootedness — vagabond against settled or domiciled — and not nationality or origin. An immigrant may be prosperous and permanently settled, and a vagabond may be a citizen who has never crossed a frontier in his life, so neither word rules the other out. The option is placed here to catch a candidate who reasons loosely that an immigrant is somebody displaced, and then reaches for another word about people without a place.
- (d)foreigners — A foreigner is a person who belongs to another country. Far from being the opposite of an immigrant, it is very nearly a description of one: the immigrants in the sentence are foreigners who have come to stay. The two words differ only in what they emphasise — ‘foreigner’ names the fact of belonging elsewhere, ‘immigrant’ the act of coming in to live. This is the second synonym-shaped option in the same set of four, and together with ‘settlers’ it makes the item a direct test of whether the candidate is answering the question the Directions asked or the one the layout might suggest.
Concept
The item tests a family of words about the movement of people, and the habit of finding the reversal that is actually on offer when the textbook pair is not.
The family, learnt together, settles a great many questions. An EMIGRANT leaves a country; an IMMIGRANT enters one to settle; the same person is both, seen from the two ends of his journey. A MIGRANT is anyone who moves, within a country or between countries, and is often used of seasonal movement for work. A REFUGEE has been forced out by war, persecution or disaster and is defined by compulsion rather than by choice. An EXPATRIATE lives outside his own country, usually for work and usually without giving up his ties to it. A NATIVE belongs to a place by birth; an ALIEN, in the language of law, is a person who is not a citizen of the country he is in; a NATURALISED citizen is a former alien who has acquired citizenship.
The prefixes carry most of the meaning and repay one minute of attention. Latin ‘in-’ or ‘im-’ means into, and gives immigrate, import, invade, income. Latin ‘ex-’ or ‘e-’ means out of, and gives emigrate, export, exit, evade. The same pair separates two verbs students confuse constantly: to emigrate FROM a place, to immigrate TO it.
When the exact opposite is missing from the options, the method is to name the property the underlined word asserts — here, having come from outside — and to pick the option that denies that property.
This is the fourth item of the ‘Antonyms’ sub-section, printed without Directions of its own. Two of its four options are near synonyms of the underlined word, which makes it the sharpest test in the block of whether the candidate has carried the instruction forward from Q6.
That design tells you something about how this paper uses its English section. The vocabulary is not difficult — every word here is one a newspaper reader meets weekly — and the marks turn on precision and on discipline rather than on range. An Enforcement Officer reads and writes documents in which ‘resident’, ‘citizen’, ‘foreigner’ and ‘employee’ are terms with consequences, and a paper that tests whether a candidate can hold four near-neighbours apart is testing something the job will ask for.
The sentence also rewards a moment’s reading. ‘Detained at the airport’ places the scene at a frontier, which is where the distinction between people of the country and people entering it is drawn, and that is the distinction the answer turns on.
Key facts
- An immigrant comes INTO a country to settle; an emigrant LEAVES one. The same journey produces both words, and the prefixes carry the difference — Latin in- (into) against ex- (out of).
- One emigrates FROM a place and immigrates TO it; the prepositions follow the prefixes.
- A migrant is anyone who moves, including within a country; a refugee has been forced to move; an expatriate lives abroad, usually for work, without severing ties to his own country.
- ‘Native’ means belonging to a place by birth, and is the available reversal of ‘immigrant’ when ‘emigrant’ is not offered; as a noun for people it carries a colonial flavour in modern English and is avoided in careful writing.
- ‘Settler’ emphasises taking up land and making a home in a new place, and is therefore a neighbour of ‘immigrant’ rather than its opposite.
- In legal usage an ‘alien’ is a person who is not a citizen of the country he is in, and a naturalised citizen is a former alien who has acquired citizenship.
Study next
Common traps
- Choosing a synonym because the layout gives no hint that opposites are wanted. Two of the four options here describe people who have arrived from elsewhere.
- Looking for ‘emigrant’, failing to find it, and then guessing. The available reversal is between those who came in and those who were born there.
- Switching axis. ‘Vagabond’ opposes settled life rather than foreign origin, and an immigrant can be perfectly settled.
- Ignoring the setting. Detention at an airport places the sentence at a border, where the working distinction is between people of the country and people entering it.
This paper likes option sets in which more than one word is close in meaning to the underlined one, so that a candidate who has half-remembered the instruction has no way of recovering it from the words themselves. Expect the antonym block to include at least one straight synonym and one near neighbour, and expect the underlined word to belong to ordinary newspaper vocabulary rather than to a rare register. The families that recur — movement of people, courage and fear, wealth and thrift, size and degree — are worth learning as sets with their prefixes attached, because the prefix often supplies the opposite by itself.
Related PYQs
EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q8Open & attempt →These regions are very fertile.
- (a) sterile
- (b) arid
- (c) barren
- (d) productive
Answer(c) barren
The item before this one in the same block, where the sense of the underlined word had to be fixed by the noun it qualified before an opposite could be chosen.
EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q11Open & attempt →Directions : Each item in this section consists of a sentence with an underlined word followed by four words. Select the option that is nearest in meaning to the underlined word and mark your response in your Answer Sheet accordingly. Today the newspaper is full of carnage and violence.
- (a) bloodshed
- (b) lust
- (c) concern
- (d) satire
Answer(a) bloodshed
The head of the next block, printed in the same shape as this one but asking for the word nearest in meaning rather than the opposite.
Practice
- practice — not a real PYQ
Select the option that is opposite in meaning to the underlined word : Thousands of workers emigrate from the district every year in search of employment.
- (a)travel
- (b)immigrate
- (c)commute
- (d)wander
Answer(b) immigrate — to emigrate is to leave one’s own country to live elsewhere, and to immigrate is to enter a country in order to settle in it, so the two verbs describe the same movement from opposite ends. ‘Travel’, ‘commute’ and ‘wander’ all describe kinds of moving about without any idea of leaving or entering a country to settle.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following words describes a person compelled to leave his country by war or persecution rather than choosing to move for work ?
- (a)expatriate
- (b)migrant
- (c)refugee
- (d)settler
Answer(c) refugee — the word is defined by compulsion: a refugee has been driven out by war, persecution or disaster and cannot safely return. An expatriate lives abroad by choice, usually for work; a migrant is anyone who moves, including within a country; and a settler is one who goes to make a home in a new place.