Select the most appropriate ANTONYM of the word in the brackets to fill in the blank. Dhara _______ the way to Mumbai. [lost]

Correct — D. The bracketed word is lost, and the blank must take its opposite in the same slot — past tense, same subject, same object, the way to Mumbai.

Lose the way and find the way are the standing pair in English, so the reversal of lost here is found.

Dhara found the way to Mumbai is the mirror of Dhara lost the way to Mumbai, which is option (d).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  paved — paved the way is an idiom meaning to make something possible for somebody else. It does not reverse losing a route, and it changes what the sentence is about.
• (b)
  helped — helped does not combine with the way in this sense, and helping is not the reverse of losing. The verb has to undo the losing, not soften it.
• (c)
  slept — slept has nothing to do with routes or directions. It replaces the action with an unrelated one instead of reversing it.

This format hands you a word in brackets and asks for its opposite, fitted into a blank. Two constraints run at once.

The first is grammatical form. Lost is past tense, so the answer must be past tense — found, not find or finding.

The second is collocation. The antonymy is not between two dictionary entries but between two phrases: lose one's way against find one's way. The blank sits in front of the way, so the answer is whichever verb builds the opposite phrase.

Key facts

• Found is the past tense of find and the standing opposite of lost.
• Lose one's way and find one's way are the paired collocations behind this item.
• Pave the way means to make something possible, not to find a route.

Common traps

• Choosing paved because pave the way is a familiar phrase, without checking that it reverses lost.
• Reading lost as defeated rather than as lost the route, which sends you looking for won.

No directly related past PYQ was found.