NDA (I) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 12 of 149

Correct — B, 'effortless'. 'Arduous' means demanding great effort, so its exact reverse is something achieved with no effort at all. Crossing streets in New York is being called hard work, and 'effortless' denies precisely that.

• (a)pleasant — This reverses the feeling rather than the effort, and a task can be pleasant while remaining arduous.
• (c)interesting — Interest measures how absorbing something is, which lies on a different axis from how much effort it costs.
• (d)risky — Risk is about danger, and a risky crossing sits closer to the original sense than opposite to it.

'Arduous' means requiring hard and sustained effort.

Three options here are agreeable-sounding words, which makes them feel like opposites of a negative term. The test is much narrower than that — reverse the one property the word actually names, and that property is effort.

• 'Arduous' descends from Latin arduus, meaning steep or hard to climb.
• 'Effortless' names the absence of effort, which makes it the direct reverse.
• An antonym item reverses one specific property, not a general mood.

• Selecting 'pleasant' because it feels like the opposite of an unpleasant word.
• Reversing the mood of a word instead of its actual meaning.

Asked as an antonym item — choose the word most opposite in meaning to the underlined word.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Choose the word most opposite in meaning to 'arduous'.

  • (a)gruelling
  • (b)easy
  • (c)tedious
  • (d)lengthy

  Answer(b) easy — arduous means demanding great effort.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Choose the word nearest in meaning to 'onerous'.

  • (a)light
  • (b)burdensome
  • (c)hasty
  • (d)optional

  Answer(b) burdensome — onerous means involving heavy obligation or effort.