SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 3 · 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 most appropriate synonym to replace the underlined word in the given sentence. How did we end up in this rapturous situation?

(a)ecstatic
(b)terrifying
(c)misleading
(d)disastrous

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Rapturous means filled with rapture, that is, with intense delight, so the replacement has to name the same overwhelming joy: ecstatic.

Rapture and ecstasy are near-twins in English, both naming feeling strong enough to carry a person out of themselves. Substitute and the sense holds: this ecstatic situation → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
terrifying — Terrifying means causing terror. It sits at the opposite pole of feeling from rapture, so it reverses the emotional charge instead of preserving it.
(c)
misleading — Misleading means giving a false impression. That is a judgement about accuracy, not about feeling, and it shares no sense with rapturous.
(d)
disastrous — Disastrous catches candidates who hear rapture as rupture. The two are unrelated: rupture is a bursting, from Latin rumpere, while rapture is being seized by joy.

Concept

A synonym-in-context item asks which word could stand in the sentence with the meaning of the underlined word unchanged. The examiner is testing the word, not the mood of the sentence around it.

Rapturous is the adjective of rapture, the state of being carried away by delight — a rapturous welcome, rapturous applause. Anything that does not name joy is out before you compare the remaining options.

The sentence itself pulls the other way: end up in usually introduces trouble, so the frame invites a negative word.

That clash is the whole difficulty of the item, and it is why terrifying and disastrous collect wrong answers. The instruction is to replace the underlined word, so the word's own meaning governs, not the collocation around it.

Key facts

Rapturous means feeling or expressing intense delight, as in a rapturous welcome.
Ecstatic shares that sense and is its ordinary one-word replacement.
Rapture (Latin rapere, to seize) and rupture (Latin rumpere, to break) are unrelated words.

Study next

Strong-emotion synonyms: elated, jubilant, euphoric, enrapturedSound-alike pairs that are not related: rapture and rupture, ingenious and ingenuousAdjectives formed from abstract nouns: rapture to rapturous, ecstasy to ecstatic

Common traps

Choosing the word that suits the mood you expect from end up in rather than the meaning of the underlined word
Treating rapturous as a relative of rupture and reaching for a negative option

The vocabulary block of this paper runs synonyms in both shapes — inside a sentence here, and as a bare word at English Q.14, which asks for a synonym of Rectify. The antonym form appears at English Q.3, Q.7 and Q.9 (all 12 Sep 2024, 16:00).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.