NDA (I) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 16 of 150

Correct — B, 'incoming'. Of post, calls and messages, 'outgoing' means going out from a place and 'incoming' means coming into it; the two are the settled pair for direction.

• (a)urgent — Urgent grades mail by priority, not by direction.
• (c)ordinary — Ordinary mail is a class of service, set against registered or express post rather than against outgoing post.
• (d)speedy — Speedy describes how fast the mail moves and again says nothing about which way it is going.

'Outgoing' has more than one sense — mail that is going out, an official who is leaving office, and a person who is sociable — and each has its own opposite.

Three options grade mail by urgency or by class and only one names a direction, so identifying the axis of the underlined word does the work. Had the sentence been about a person's nature, the opposite would have been 'reserved' or 'shy'; had it been about an office-bearer, it would have been 'incoming' again, as in the outgoing and incoming presidents.

• 'Outgoing' also means sociable and friendly, whose opposite is reserved or withdrawn.
• An outgoing officer is the one about to leave a post, and the successor is the incoming one.
• 'Outgoings' as a plural noun means money going out — expenses.

• Grading the mail by urgency instead of by direction.
• Reaching for 'shy' or 'reserved' by reading the personality sense.

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 'outgoing' in 'an outgoing personality'.

  • (a)friendly
  • (b)reserved
  • (c)cheerful
  • (d)generous

  Answer(b) reserved — in this sense outgoing means sociable.

• practice — not a real PYQ

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

  • (a)transport
  • (b)import
  • (c)report
  • (d)support

  Answer(b) import — the prefixes ex- and im- carry the two directions.