NDA (II) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 20 of 150

Correct — B, 'foreign'. 'Indigenous' means native to a place, produced or developed within the country itself, so of a television set's components it means made in India. The reverse of that is components brought in from abroad, which is what 'foreign' names.

• (a)Indian — In this sentence that is what the underlined word already means, so the option repeats it instead of reversing it.
• (c)unnatural — This reverses 'natural', not 'indigenous'; where a part was made and whether it is natural are different questions.
• (d)genuine — 'Genuine' sits opposite 'fake', and an imported component is no less genuine for having been imported.

'Indigenous' means originating or occurring naturally in a particular place, and in Indian industrial and defence writing it marks something built in the country rather than imported.

The decoy here is unusually direct — option (a) simply restates the meaning of the word in this context, and a candidate reading quickly may take the match for the answer. The other two wrong options are opposites of words that merely resemble the underlined one, which is why naming the axis first pays: the word is about origin, so the answer must be about origin too.

• 'Indigenous' comes from Latin 'indigena', meaning a native.
• It is used of people, of plants and animals, and of technology.
• 'Indigenously developed' is standard usage in Indian defence and industry reporting; the word for the reverse in trade language is 'imported'.

• Marking 'Indian', which matches the sense instead of reversing it.
• Reading 'indigenous' as 'natural' and choosing 'unnatural'.

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

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Choose the word most opposite in meaning to 'indigenous' in 'The garden has many indigenous species.'

  • (a)native
  • (b)exotic
  • (c)flowering
  • (d)hardy

  Answer(b) exotic — of plants, exotic species are those brought in from elsewhere.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Choose the word nearest in meaning to 'indigenous'.

  • (a)imported
  • (b)native
  • (c)ancient
  • (d)rare

  Answer(b) native — indigenous means belonging naturally to a place.