SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 11 of 100

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 6 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 option that can be used as a one word substitute for the given group of words. An often-imaginary place or state of utter perfection and happiness

(a)Dystopia
(b)Euphoria
(c)Inferno
(d)Utopia

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The gloss has two halves and utopia answers both: it names an imagined place or state, and the perfection and happiness of the life lived in it.

Thomas More coined the word as the title of his 1516 book, building it from Greek roots that mean no place — the hint, inside the word itself, that such a society is imagined rather than found: option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Dystopia — Dystopia is the exact reverse — an imagined society of suffering, fear or repression. It matches the imaginary half of the gloss and contradicts the perfection half.
(b)
Euphoria — Euphoria is an intense but passing state of elation felt by a person. It is a feeling, not a place or a social order, so the often-imaginary part of the gloss has nothing to attach to.
(c)
Inferno — Inferno means a raging fire, and by extension hell. Nothing in it suggests perfection, and it is picked only by candidates treating any grand imagined realm as a candidate.

Concept

One-word substitution is scored by matching every clause of the gloss, not the general mood of it.

This gloss has three testable pieces: often-imaginary, a place or state, and utter perfection and happiness.

Dystopia clears the first two and fails the third. Euphoria clears happiness and fails place. Utopia clears all three, and that is what makes it the substitute rather than a near neighbour.

Utopia and dystopia are set as a pair often enough that the safest habit is to decide first whether the gloss describes a good world or a bad one, and only then to read the options.

Key facts

Utopia was coined by Thomas More as the title of his 1516 work about an imaginary island commonwealth.
The Greek roots behind the word mean no place, which is why it carries the sense of something imagined.
Dystopia is its antonym, naming an imagined society marked by suffering or oppression.
Euphoria names an intense feeling of wellbeing in a person, not a place.

Study next

One-word substitutes for imagined societies: utopia, dystopia, arcadiaPrefix pairs that flip a word's meaning, such as eu- for good against dys- for badNouns for extreme states of feeling: euphoria, ecstasy, elation

Common traps

Picking euphoria because the gloss ends on happiness, and stopping the read there.
Taking often-imaginary as a signal for anything fictional, which lets inferno in.
Confusing utopia with dystopia when the eu- and dys- prefixes are skimmed.

This one-word-substitution set offers the right word beside a same-field near-miss — utopia paired with dystopia. Read the gloss clause by clause and eliminate on the clause each option fails.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.