NDA (II) 2023 GAT Q42: To neglect a warning is to invite

Q: What is the answer to NDA (II) 2023 GAT Q42?

C. Correct — C, ‘regard’. To neglect a warning is to pay it no attention, so the opposite is to attend to it, and regard carries exactly that sense of giving something notice and weight. It is the sense preserved in the formal phrase ‘have regard to’, which turns up in statutes and official orders.

NDA (II) 2023 General Ability Test · Question 42 of 146

Question text verified against the official NDA question paper.

To neglect a warning is to invite danger.

(a)disregard
(b)ignore
(c)regard
(d)overlook

Answer

Why

Correct — C, ‘regard’. To neglect a warning is to pay it no attention, so the opposite is to attend to it, and regard carries exactly that sense of giving something notice and weight. It is the sense preserved in the formal phrase ‘have regard to’, which turns up in statutes and official orders.

Why the others are wrong

(a)disregard — The prefix dis- points the wrong way — to disregard is to ignore, which is what neglect already means.
(b)ignore — A straight synonym of the underlined word, not an opposite.
(d)overlook — To overlook is to fail to notice or to let something pass, which again matches neglect instead of reversing it.

Concept

Three of the four options mean roughly what the underlined word means, and only one turns against it. That lopsided pattern is itself the clue in an antonym item.

Regard and disregard differ by a single prefix, and the paper puts both on the list to see whether the candidate reads to the end of the word. When three options cluster in meaning, none of them can be the single answer, so the odd one out is where the answer has to lie.

Key facts

Neglect, ignore, disregard and overlook all describe a failure to attend to something.
As a verb regard means to consider or to pay heed to; the noun survives in phrases such as ‘in this regard’.

Study next

Antonyms formed by the prefix dis-Regard, disregard, heed and neglectOdd-one-out reasoning in antonym itemsVerbs of attention and inattention

Common traps

Reading the first syllables only and settling on disregard.
Assuming the answer must be the least familiar word on the list.

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

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the word most nearly opposite in meaning to the underlined word. He tends to shun company.
- (a)avoid
- (b)seek
- (c)dislike
- (d)escape
Answer(b) seek — to shun is to keep away from, so the opposite is to go after.
practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the word most nearly opposite in meaning to the underlined word. The officer heeded the advice.
- (a)followed
- (b)noted
- (c)ignored
- (d)obeyed
Answer(c) ignored — the other three all mean paying attention to the advice.