SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 11 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 3 of 95

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 ANTONYM of the underlined word. He was very cruel in dealing with the students.

(a)Skittish
(b)Malevolent
(c)Kind
(d)Kingly

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The underlined word is cruel, and an antonym item wants the word at the other end of the same scale — here, how a person treats other people.

Kind is that opposite: cruel is deliberately causing pain, kind is deliberately sparing it.

Substitute it back and the sentence reverses cleanly and still sounds like English: He was very kind in dealing with the students → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Skittish — Skittish means nervous and easily startled, or changeable in mood. It describes temperament under stress, not treatment of other people, so it is not on the cruel scale at all.
(b)
Malevolent — Malevolent means wishing harm on others, which makes it a synonym of cruel rather than its antonym. A strong-sounding word is easy to mistake for a contrast.
(d)
Kingly — Kingly means royal, or befitting a king. It shares its first three letters with kind and nothing else, and it is planted for a hurried eye.

Concept

An antonym item is settled by the axis, not by how strong the word sounds. Fix what the underlined word measures, then find the option that measures the same thing in reverse.

Cruel measures treatment of others on a compassion axis. Its opposites are kind, humane, gentle, merciful. Its synonyms are brutal, callous, malevolent, savage.

Two of the options here are off that axis altogether, and one is on it facing the wrong way. Only kind faces the right way.

A candidate's response sheet does not preserve the underline the printed paper carries. It does not matter here: all four options are adjectives describing a person, and cruel is the only such adjective in the sentence.

Key facts

Kind is the standard antonym of cruel on the axis of how a person treats others.
Malevolent means wishing harm on others, which makes it a synonym of cruel.
Skittish means nervous and easily startled, or changeable in mood.
Kingly means royal or befitting a king, and is unrelated in meaning to kind.

Study next

Telling a planted synonym from a true antonym in a four-option setAntonym pairs on the temperament axis, such as timid and daringLook-alike words that share a stem but not a meaning, such as kind and kingly

Common traps

Picking malevolent because it feels like a strong opposite when it is a synonym
Reading kingly as a form of kind
Reversing the meaning without checking the substituted word still sounds idiomatic

The planted-synonym trap recurs across the 2024 papers: Timid is offered against Meek at 10 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.15, and Catastrophe against Disaster at 12 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.3.

The underlined-in-a-sentence framing also runs at 12 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.7 (strong, keyed to weak).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.