SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 11 of 99

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.

Identity the most appropriate ANTONYM of the underlined word in the following sentence. I love the stunning view of the mountain.

(a)Superfluous
(b)Smashing
(c)Toxic
(d)Mundane

Answer

Why

Correct — D. In a stunning view, stunning means strikingly beautiful. The noun it modifies fixes that sense and rules out the older sense of stun, to knock senseless.

An antonym therefore has to reverse beauty, and mundane — ordinary, commonplace, of the everyday world — is the option that does. The key takes option (d).

Note the direction of the test: you are not hunting for a negative word, you are hunting for the plainest one.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Superfluous — Superfluous means more than is needed. It reverses necessary, not beautiful, so it never touches the sense stunning carries in this sentence.
(b)
Smashing — Smashing means excellent or wonderful, so it is a synonym of stunning rather than its opposite. It is the option placed to catch a fast reader.
(c)
Toxic — Toxic means poisonous or harmful. It is negative, but negative is not the same as opposite — the axis being tested is ordinary against striking.

Concept

An antonym item is settled by the sense the word carries in this sentence, not by every sense it has.

Stun originally means to knock senseless, and stunning can still mean shocking. A stunning view of the mountain fixes the other sense: strikingly impressive or beautiful.

The opposite of that is not ugly — no option offers ugly — but mundane: ordinary, unremarkable, everyday. Latin mundus means world, and the plain everyday world is exactly what a stunning view is not.

Two options here sit on a different axis altogether (superfluous, toxic) and one, smashing, means much the same as stunning. That leaves ordinary against striking, and mundane is the word on it.

Key facts

In a stunning view, stunning means strikingly impressive or beautiful.
Mundane means ordinary and commonplace, from Latin mundus meaning world.
Smashing is informal British English for excellent or wonderful.

Study next

Antonyms that turn on the sense a word takes in contextWords for the ordinary: mundane, prosaic, humdrum, banalAdjectives of strong approval: stunning, smashing, striking

Common traps

Choosing a word that merely sounds negative instead of one that reverses the meaning.
Answering from the dictionary's first sense when the sentence has already fixed a different one.

SSC underlines the word inside a sentence so that context, not the dictionary, picks the sense.

The same shape is asked at 19 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.13, where dark in a sentence about early winter evenings is keyed to bright, with gloomy sitting in the options as a near-miss.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.