SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 23 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 20 of 97

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.

Select the most appropriate ANTONYM of the given word. Material

(a)Cheap
(b)Temporary
(c)Abstract
(d)Concrete

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Material as an adjective means made of matter, having physical substance. Its direct opposite is abstract — existing as an idea, with no bodily form.

The pair worth holding is material / abstract: a chair is material, justice is abstract.

Option (c) is the choice that reverses the sense of physical existence, which is what an antonym has to do. The other three reverse some different attribute, or none at all.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Cheap — Cheap is about price, and its opposite is expensive. Cost has nothing to do with whether a thing has physical substance.
(b)
Temporary — Temporary is about duration, and its opposite is permanent. A material object can be temporary and an idea can last for centuries.
(d)
Concrete — Concrete is a near-synonym of material — both mean physically real — so it cannot be its antonym. The familiar school pair concrete/abstract is what makes it look right.

Concept

Material carries three common senses, and an antonym item asks you to pick the sense the options support.

As a noun it means cloth or raw substance. As an adjective it means physical, made of matter. As a second adjective it means important or relevant, as in a material fact, whose opposite is immaterial.

Here Concrete and Abstract both belong to the physical-versus-non-physical family, but concrete sits on the same side of it as material. Only abstract sits across from it.

The item prints the word bare, with no sentence around it, so the intended sense has to be read off the options themselves. Two of them point at the physical sense, and that is the signal.

Key facts

As an adjective, material means consisting of matter or physical substance.
Abstract means existing in thought or as an idea, without physical existence.
Concrete and material are near-synonyms in the physical sense, so concrete cannot be an antonym of material.
Material has a second adjectival sense, important or relevant, whose opposite is immaterial.

Study next

Antonym items in which one option is a synonym of the given wordThe senses of material: the noun, the physical adjective, and the legal senseAbstract and concrete nouns

Common traps

Recalling the school pair concrete versus abstract and picking concrete because the two words are always taught together
Reading material as the noun for cloth, after which none of the four options looks like an opposite

A bare-word antonym item gives no sentence, so the sense is fixed by the options — and a synonym of the given word may be sitting among them.

You can see the same planting at 12 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.3 (Catastrophe, with Disaster among the options) and 26 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.16 (Coy, with Shy among the options).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.