Select the most appropriate synonym of the given word. Magnificent

Correct — C. Magnificent means grand, imposing, strikingly beautiful, and splendid carries that same sense. A splendid palace and a magnificent palace describe the same building.

The two words also match in tone: both praise the scale and beauty of a thing, and neither says anything about its holiness or its speed.

The other three options are not rivals in meaning at all. They are near-misses of sound and spelling, which is how this item is built, and only option (c) answers the word in the stem.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Sacred — Sacred means holy, set apart for religious use. A temple can be magnificent and sacred at once, but grandeur and holiness are different ideas and only one of them is being asked for.
• (b)
  Scared — Scared means frightened. It is Sacred with two letters swapped, printed beside it so that a fast reader confuses the pair and never weighs either against magnificent.
• (d)
  Slow — Slow is a word about speed. Nothing in magnificent refers to pace, and no sense of the word touches how fast anything moves.

Magnificent belongs to a tight cluster of words for impressive grandeur: splendid, grand, majestic, imposing, resplendent.

The roots make the sense easy to hold. Magnificent comes from Latin magnus, great; splendid comes from Latin splendere, to shine.

Both describe something that impresses by its size, richness or beauty, which is why either can replace the other in front of a palace, a view or a performance.

Key facts

• Magnificent means impressively grand or beautiful, and comes from Latin magnus, meaning great.
• Splendid means magnificent or brilliant, and comes from Latin splendere, meaning to shine.
• Sacred means holy or consecrated, while scared means frightened.
• Sacred and scared are spelt with the same letters in a different order, which is what makes one easy to read as the other under time pressure.

Common traps

• Reading option (a) Sacred as Scared, or the reverse, when both are printed together
• Choosing a word that merely suits a magnificent thing, such as sacred for a temple, instead of a word that means the same as magnificent

No directly related past PYQ was found.