The experience of Covid Pandemic was excruciating for much of the population.
- (a)gnawing
- (b)gruelling
- (c)harrowing
- (d)mild
Correct — D, ‘mild’. Excruciating means intensely painful, sitting at the very top of the scale of suffering. Mild sits at the bottom of that same scale, and the far end of the axis is what an antonym item asks for. The other three options all describe hardship of one kind or another.
- (a)gnawing — Gnawing describes a persistent, wearing pain — it agrees with the underlined word in kind and differs only in degree.
- (b)gruelling — Gruelling means exhausting and punishing, another word for a hard experience rather than an easy one.
- (c)harrowing — Harrowing means deeply distressing, the closest synonym on the list and the most tempting wrong answer.
Excruciating comes from Latin excruciare, to torment on a cross, and English has kept the extreme force of that root. An antonym item on an intensity word is asking for the low end of the same scale.
Three of the four options describe painful experiences and only one describes an easy one, so the count alone points the way. The printed sentence reads ‘the experience of Covid Pandemic’ without an article before the phrase — the booklet's own wording, reproduced here as printed, and it has no bearing on the word being tested.
- Excruciating traces to Latin crux, a cross, through the verb excruciare, to torture.
- Gnawing, gruelling and harrowing all describe hardship, differing in whether the strain is persistent, exhausting or distressing.
- Mild is the standard opposite for intensity words applied to pain, illness and weather alike.
- Picking harrowing because it is the strongest-sounding word offered.
- Hunting for a sophisticated opposite when the plain word mild is the answer.
Asked as an antonym item — pick the word opposite in meaning to the underlined word.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the word most nearly opposite in meaning to the underlined word. The climb was gruelling.
- (a)steep
- (b)easy
- (c)long
- (d)risky
Answer(b) easy — gruelling means punishing, so the opposite is undemanding.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the word most nearly opposite in meaning to the underlined word. He suffered acute pain after the fall.
- (a)sharp
- (b)sudden
- (c)mild
- (d)constant
Answer(c) mild — acute pain is severe, mild pain is slight.