SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 2 of 98

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.

Identify the correct antonym for the given word. Envious

(a)Suspicious
(b)Generous
(c)Untrustworthy
(d)Malicious

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Envious means resentful of what somebody else has — their looks, their luck, their promotion.

The reverse of that attitude is one that gives freely and is glad at another person's good fortune, which English calls generous.

Put the two on one axis: the envious person grudges, the generous person gives. That is the reading the key takes, option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Suspicious — Suspicious means inclined to distrust. That is a negative disposition like envy, not its reverse — a generous person can be suspicious without contradiction.
(c)
Untrustworthy — Untrustworthy judges whether a person can be relied on. It measures character, not how somebody reacts to another person's advantages, so it does not sit on this axis at all.
(d)
Malicious — Malicious means wishing harm on someone. It stands on the same resentful side of the axis as envious, which makes it a near neighbour of the word rather than its opposite.

Concept

An antonym item asks for a reversal along one axis of meaning, and the first job is to name that axis. Envious is about how you react to somebody else's good fortune — with resentment.

Reverse only that, and you get an open-handed, ungrudging attitude: generous.

Generous carries two linked senses, giving a lot and being magnanimous rather than mean-spirited. The second sense is the one that makes it the opposite of envious.

The three rejected options are all unflattering words. When every distractor sits on the same side of the axis as the given word, the positive odd one out is usually the answer — but still check that its positive sense reverses the axis rather than merely sounding pleasant.

Key facts

Envious means feeling resentment at another person's advantages or possessions.
Generous means both open-handed in giving and magnanimous rather than mean-spirited.
Malicious means intending harm, which puts it close to envious in tone rather than opposite to it.

Study next

Antonym pairs built on attitude rather than degree, such as generous and grudgingThe difference between envy and jealousy in vocabulary itemsNegative-feeling words that get mistaken for antonyms of one another, such as malicious, spiteful and resentful

Common traps

Picking malicious because it is the strongest word on offer, when strength is not the axis being reversed.
Reading envious as untrustworthy, which confuses a feeling with a judgement about reliability.

SSC sets antonyms in several shapes: a bare word, an underlined word inside a sentence, and a bracketed word to be reversed in a blank.

This shift also carries antonyms at English Q.5 (an underlined word), Q.9 (a bracketed word) and Q.20 (a bare word). The underlined-word shape is set on 11 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.8 as well.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.