SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 17 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 5 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 ANTONYM of the given word. Synthetic

(a)Natural
(b)Processed
(c)Artificial
(d)Imitation

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Synthetic means made by chemical synthesis — put together by people rather than produced by nature. The word comes from Greek 'synthetos', put together.

So the opposite has to flip the origin of the thing, and that is what natural does: occurring in nature, not manufactured.

Synthetic fibre against natural fibre, synthetic rubber against natural rubber — option (a) is the pairing English actually uses.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Processed — Processed describes what has been done to a thing, not where it came from. Processed cheese begins as milk, so a processed product can still be natural in origin.
(c)
Artificial — Artificial is a synonym of synthetic, not its reverse. This is the standard antonym trap: the option that agrees with the given word instead of opposing it.
(d)
Imitation — Imitation means made in copy of something else, as in imitation leather. That sits on the same side of the divide as synthetic, since an imitation is manufactured too.

Concept

Antonym sets in SSC are built to punish speed. Three of the four options here sit on the same side of the meaning as 'synthetic', and a quick reader picks whichever of them feels strongest.

The question to ask first is what dimension the word lives on. 'Synthetic' is about origin — made by people, or produced by nature. Name the dimension and the opposite is forced: natural.

A word such as 'processed' lives on a different dimension altogether, that of treatment, so it cannot be an opposite however negative it sounds.

Synthetic has a figurative use too — a synthetic smile, meaning insincere — where the opposite would be 'genuine'. The bare word with no sentence points at the material sense, which is what the option set assumes.

Key facts

Synthetic means produced by chemical synthesis rather than occurring in nature.
The word comes from the Greek 'synthetos', meaning put together.
Artificial and imitation are near-synonyms of synthetic, not antonyms of it.

Study next

Antonym sets in which three options are synonyms of the given wordNaming the dimension a word lives on before hunting for its oppositeMaterial vocabulary: synthetic, natural, organic, processed, refined

Common traps

Picking 'artificial' because it feels like the strongest word in the set.
Treating 'processed' as an opposite because processed food is contrasted with natural food.

SSC prints the bare word with no sentence, so there is no context to steer you and the option set is the entire question.

Bare-word antonyms are also asked 10 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.3 ('Mechanical', keyed to 'Manual') and 11 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.14 ('Brittle', keyed to 'Resilient').

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.