Select the most appropriate ANTONYM of the underlined word in the given sentence. Coffee was too hot; it burnt my tongue.

Correct — C. The underlined word is hot, and it is literal temperature here, because the coffee burnt a tongue.

So the answer has to be the cold end of the same scale. Frigid means intensely cold, of weather or of a manner.

Coffee too hot to drink against coffee that is frigid — that is the reversal the item wants, and it is option (c).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Balmy — Balmy means pleasantly mild and warm. It softens the heat instead of reversing it, and mild warmth is still warmth.
• (b)
  Scorching — Scorching means burning hot, a synonym of the underlined word. It is the classic mis-click when a candidate reads ANTONYM as a request for a match.
• (d)
  Subtle — Subtle means delicate or hard to detect. It belongs to a different axis altogether — how noticeable a thing is, not how hot.

An antonym in context is settled by the sense the sentence activates, not by a dictionary's first entry.

Here hot is temperature, because it burnt a tongue. Reverse temperature and you want very cold, which is frigid.

Had the sentence read a hot argument or hot news, the reversal would have been calm, or stale. The underlined word on its own never settles an antonym item.

Key facts

• Frigid means extremely cold, used of weather and of manner.
• Balmy means pleasantly mild and warm, so it sits on the same side of the scale as hot.
• Scorching is a synonym of hot rather than its antonym.

Common traps

• Marking scorching because it is the most vivid word standing next to hot.
• Choosing balmy on the belief that mild is the opposite of extreme.

No directly related past PYQ was found.