SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 12 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 most appropriate synonym of the word in brackets to fill in the blank. Listening to the same lecture everyday appeared very ___________ to him. (boring)

(a)monotonous
(b)furious
(c)monolithic
(d)nervous

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The bracketed word (boring) is the meaning the blank has to carry, and the slot follows appeared very, so it needs an adjective.

Monotonous means dull through lack of variety — unvarying, and tiresome for that reason.

The sentence supplies its own confirmation: the same lecture everyday. Sameness with no change is precisely what monotonous names, which makes option (a) both the right sense and the right fit.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
furious — Furious means extremely angry, or violently intense. A lecture heard too often wears a listener down rather than enraging him, and nothing in the sentence points to anger.
(c)
monolithic — Monolithic shares the mono- prefix and nothing else. It means formed of one massive block, and is used of structures and organisations, never of tedium.
(d)
nervous — Nervous means anxious or easily agitated. It names a state of worry, which is a different feeling from boredom and unconnected to repetition.

Concept

In this format the bracketed word is the meaning and the blank is the test. Two things have to hold at once: the option must mean what the bracket says, and it must fit the grammar of the slot.

Here all four options are adjectives, so grammar rules nothing out and the decision is pure sense. That is why the decoy is built on a shared prefix — mono- appears in both monotonous and monolithic without making them relatives in meaning.

The paper prints everyday as one word where standard usage would take every day. Read it as the adverbial phrase; the spelling does not change the meaning the blank has to match.

Key facts

Monotonous comes from Greek monotonos, of one tone, and means unvarying and therefore dull.
Monolithic means formed from a single large block of stone, and is used of massive or uniform structures.
The Greek prefix mono- means one, and it appears in both words without making them synonyms.

Study next

Prefix-lookalike pairs: monotonous and monolithic, ingenious and ingenuous, judicial and judiciousAdjectives for tedium: tedious, humdrum, insipid, wearisomeReading the sentence clue before the options in a fill-in-the-blank vocabulary item

Common traps

Picking monolithic because the shared mono- looks like the link the question is pointing at.
Matching the option to the mood of the sentence instead of to the word in brackets.

SSC works the same word from both sides: 12 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.9 asks for the antonym of Monotonous and keys Engrossing. The bracketed-word format itself recurs in this shift at English Q.9, and the underlined-word version at English Q.6, where the synonym of enchanting is keyed as alluring.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.