SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 14 of 98

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Select the most appropriate synonym of the bold word in the following sentence. He tried to alleviate the sufferings of his neighbours.

(a)Swell
(b)Add
(c)Relieve
(d)Intensify

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Alleviate means to make something less severe — to lessen it, ease it, take weight off it.

The object in the sentence is sufferings, and what you do to suffering when you alleviate it is precisely what relieve names: reduce it and make it easier to bear. 'Relieve the sufferings of his neighbours' is the same sentence in plainer words.

Swell, add and intensify all push the other way. The item is testing direction of change before shade of meaning, and only option (c) points downward.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Swell — Swell means to grow larger or increase in volume. It moves the suffering up rather than down, which is the reverse of what 'tried to alleviate' describes.
(b)
Add — Add means to put more of something in. It increases exactly what alleviate reduces, and it is the vaguest word in the list about what is being changed.
(d)
Intensify — Intensify means to make stronger or more extreme. It is the nearest thing here to a direct antonym of alleviate, which is why it sits among the options.

Concept

Alleviate goes back to the Latin 'levis', meaning light — to alleviate is to make a burden lighter. It takes abstract objects: pain, suffering, poverty, congestion, symptoms.

Relieve is its everyday equivalent and takes the same objects: relieve pain, relieve pressure, relieve suffering. Where alleviate is formal, relieve is neutral, and SSC treats them as interchangeable here.

When three options point one way and one points the other, the question is about direction, not about register or intensity. Read the arrows first and the field usually collapses to a single candidate.

Relieve has a second sense — to take over from someone on duty, as in relieving a sentry — but the sentence supplies 'sufferings' as the object, which fixes the sense that matters.

Key facts

Alleviate — to make a pain, problem or burden less severe.
Relieve shares alleviate's objects: relieve pain, relieve pressure, relieve suffering.
Aggravate and intensify are the standard opposites of alleviate.
Alleviate is built on the Latin 'levis', light, the same root behind 'levity' and 'alleviation'.

Study next

Verbs of lessening: alleviate, mitigate, assuage, allay, palliateVerbs of worsening that serve as their distractors: aggravate, exacerbate, intensifyDeciding a synonym question by direction of change before shade of meaning

Common traps

Misreading 'alleviate' as 'elevate', which looks similar and means to raise.
Choosing intensify because it is the longest and most formal-sounding word on offer.

SSC asks the synonym both as a bare word and inside a sentence. This shift runs the in-sentence form at English Q.1 ('deplorable' — Despicable) and Q.5 ('trembling' — Shivering), and the bare form at Q.19 ('Equivocal' — Ambiguous).

The same lessen-versus-worsen contrast is tested from the antonym side on 09 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.20, where the opposite of 'allay' is keyed as 'aggravate'.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.