SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 13 September 2024, Shift 1 · 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 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 in the given sentence. An elephant is a large mammal.

(a)Bumper
(b)Gigantic
(c)Tiny
(d)Heroic

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The underlined word is large, and an antonym has to reverse it on its own scale — size.

Tiny is the far end of small, so it points the opposite way along that scale → option (c).

The sentence itself is neutral filler. Elephants really are large, so you are not being asked what is true of elephants, only for the word that means the reverse of large.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Bumper — Bumper means unusually large or plentiful, as in a bumper crop. It agrees with large instead of reversing it.
(b)
Gigantic — Gigantic is large taken further still. It sits at the same end of the size scale, so it cannot be the opposite.
(d)
Heroic — Heroic describes courage, not size. An antonym must reverse the word on the scale that word belongs to, and bravery is a different scale.

Concept

An antonym reverses a word on the scale that word belongs to. Fix the scale first — here it is size — and any option measuring something else is gone before you weigh it.

Two of the four options, bumper and gigantic, sit at the same end of that scale as large. The word that feels strongest is not the word that points the other way.

Heroic changes the scale altogether, from size to character. Only tiny runs back down the size scale, which is what an antonym has to do.

A candidate response sheet does not reproduce underlining, so the stem prints the sentence plain. Only large has an opposite among these four options, which is what fixes it as the underlined word.

Key facts

Tiny is the antonym of large because both words measure size and tiny sits at the small end.
Bumper means exceptionally large or plentiful, used most often of a harvest.
Gigantic intensifies large rather than reversing it.
An antonym must share the semantic scale of the word it opposes, which is why heroic cannot oppose large.

Study next

Antonym sets where two options intensify the given word instead of reversing itDegree words along one scale, from tiny through small, large and gigantic

Common traps

Picking gigantic because it is the most extreme word on the list.
Knowing bumper only as the bar on a car and dismissing it without its crop sense.
Answering from the sentence rather than from the word, and looking for something untrue of elephants.

The antonym of an underlined word is printed inside a short sentence that carries no argument, so the sentence fixes the part of speech and little else.

The same frame runs at 11 Sep 2024, 9:00, English Q.3, where cruel takes Kind, and at 12 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.7, where strong takes Weak.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.