Select the most appropriate meaning of the underlined word in the given sentence. This building is colossal and it can hold a village’s population in it.

Correct — B. Colossal means extremely large. The word goes back to colossus, the name for a giant statue, and its sense has always been about scale.

The sentence hands you the test: the building can hold a village's population in it. That measures size, not looks, not sturdiness, not how long the building will last.

Of the four options, only very huge means great size — option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  very beautiful — very beautiful answers a question about appearance. Colossal says nothing about how a building looks, and the clue in the sentence is capacity, not beauty.
• (c)
  puny — puny means small and weak. It is the exact opposite of colossal, and a puny building could not hold a village's population.
• (d)
  temporary — temporary is about duration, not size. Nothing in the sentence puts a time limit on the building, and colossal carries no sense of being short-lived.

A meaning-of-the-underlined-word item is a reading question wearing a vocabulary costume. Even if the word is new to you, the clause around it can restate the sense, as it does here.

The second clause, it can hold a village's population, is a paraphrase of huge, and it points at exactly one option.

This option set holds one synonym, one antonym (puny) and two adjectives from unrelated fields, appearance and duration.

Key facts

• Colossal means extremely large, and derives from colossus, a gigantic statue.
• Puny means small and weak, and is an antonym of colossal.
• Immense, gigantic and enormous carry the same sense of great size as colossal.

Common traps

• Picking puny because it is the word most obviously connected to colossal. Connected is not the same as equivalent.
• Guessing from the sound of the word. Colossal has nothing to do with collapse or with colonial.

No directly related past PYQ was found.