Select the most appropriate ANTONYM of the underlined word. Evenings get dark very early in this cold weather.

Correct — A. The word under test is dark in "Evenings get dark very early", where it measures how much light there is.

On that scale the plain reverse is Bright — giving out or reflecting much light.

Dim, shadowy and gloomy all sit on the same side as dark, each subtracting light rather than adding it, which leaves option (a) as the one word that turns the scale round.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)
  Dim — dim means faintly lit — less light, not more. It is a milder version of dark and belongs on the same side of the scale.
• (c)
  Shadowy — shadowy describes a place full of shadows, which is darkness with a shape. Nothing in it points towards light.
• (d)
  Gloomy — gloomy carries both dark and dispirited, and either sense agrees with the sentence instead of opposing it.

An antonym inside a sentence is answered from the sense the sentence switches on, not from the word's whole range.

dark can mean unlit, deep in colour, secret or menacing. Here the subject is evenings in cold weather, so only the light-and-shade sense is live.

Once that is fixed the option set reads as a ladder — bright, dim, shadowy, gloomy — with one rung above the line and three below it.

Key facts

• Bright means giving out or reflecting a lot of light.
• Dark, dim, shadowy and gloomy all describe reduced light.
• Gloomy has a second sense, low-spirited, which is still no opposite of dark.
• An antonym must reverse the sense the sentence uses, not some other sense of the word.

Common traps

• Picking gloomy because it feels like the strongest contrast in mood.
• Answering from a sense of dark the sentence never uses, such as secret.
• Treating dim as the opposite because it is weaker than dark.

No directly related past PYQ was found.