SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 1 of 99

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.

Identity the most appropriate ANTONYM of the given word. Secure

(a)Trundle
(b)Save
(c)Succeed
(d)Attack

Answer

Why

Correct — D. As a verb, secure means to make safe, to protect, to guard against harm.

The opposite of guarding something is moving against it, and that is exactly what attack names: to assail, to set upon. So option (d) reverses the headword.

Secure carries a second sense, to obtain (secure a seat, secure a loan). No option opposes that sense, which is how you know the safety sense is the one being tested.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Trundle — Trundle means to roll or move along heavily and slowly, the way a loaded cart does. It describes a manner of movement and touches safety nowhere, so it cannot reverse secure.
(b)
Save — Save stands on the same side as secure, not against it, since both mean to keep from harm. Antonym items routinely plant a near synonym among the options, and this is it.
(c)
Succeed — Succeed means to achieve what you set out to do. It brushes against secure only in the unrelated sense of obtaining something, and achieving is not the reverse of protecting.

Concept

An SSC antonym item is settled by sense selection. A headword like secure carries more than one meaning: to make safe (secure the building), to obtain (secure a job), and as an adjective, free from danger.

So read all four options before you fix the meaning of the headword. Ask which sense any option is capable of reversing.

Here the safety sense is the sense with an opposite on the list, and once you commit to it attack is the single word that turns it around.

The word is given bare, with no sentence around it, so the options are your evidence for which sense SSC intends.

The stem as printed reads 'Identity the most appropriate ANTONYM' where it means 'Identify'. That is the paper's own wording, reproduced here as it stands.

Key facts

Secure as a verb has two everyday senses: to make safe, and to obtain.
Attack means to act violently against a person or thing, the reverse of guarding it.
Trundle is a verb of slow, heavy movement and belongs to no safety pair at all.

Study next

Protect-versus-assail antonym pairs such as safeguard, shield and secure against assail and endangerVocabulary headwords carrying two live senses, such as secure, check and addressMovement verbs that turn up as filler options, such as trundle, amble and lumber

Common traps

Choosing Save because it feels linked to Secure, when the link is synonymy and not opposition
Fixing on the 'obtain' sense of Secure and then hunting for a word meaning lose, which is not offered

SSC runs the same protect-versus-assail pair from the far end at 17 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.8, where the headword is Attack and the key is Defence.

A sentence-framed version appears at 11 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.7, where the antonym of jeopardise is keyed as Safeguard.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.