SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 24 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 4 of 98

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 10 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 from the following sentence. Barren "Can you believe how much traffic there is today?", grumbled Tom, glancing at the congested road ahead.

(a)Grumbled
(b)Glancing
(c)Believe
(d)Congested

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The word to oppose is Barren, and the four options are all lifted from the traffic sentence.

Barren means bare, empty, stripped of what should fill it — a barren field, a barren stretch of road.

Congested means so full that movement is choked. Empty against packed is the opposition the key takes: option (d).

Grumbled, glancing and believe have no bearing on fullness at all.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Grumbled — Grumbled means complained in a low, discontented voice. Its opposite runs towards praised or rejoiced, nowhere near a word about empty land.
(b)
Glancing — Glancing means looking briefly. Its opposite is staring or gazing, a scale of attention rather than of fullness.
(c)
Believe — Believe means to accept something as true. Its opposite is doubt or disbelieve, again on a different axis from barren.

Concept

This item has two layers. It gives a word, Barren, and then a sentence, and every option is a word from that sentence — so you must first find which one lies on the same scale as barren before you can reverse it.

Barren sits on a scale of fullness: barren land grows nothing, a barren room holds nothing.

Congested is at the other end of exactly that scale — a congested road holds more than it can move. Grumbling, glancing and believing belong to scales of mood, of sight and of belief.

The first dictionary sense of barren is infertile, of land or of a plant, and its textbook antonym is fertile. No option offers that. When the textbook antonym is missing, the item is being decided on a secondary sense, here empty against crowded.

Key facts

Barren means bare or unproductive, whether of land, of effort or of result.
Congested means overcrowded or blocked, used of roads, of lungs and of cities.
The textbook antonym of barren in its fertility sense is fertile or fruitful.

Study next

Antonym pairs built on fullness: sparse and dense, vacant and occupiedWords with a literal and a figurative sense, such as barren talks and a fruitful meetingAntonym items where the options are drawn from a supplied sentence

Common traps

Hunting for fertile, the expected antonym, and stalling when it is not offered
Picking grumbled because it feels negative, when negativity is not the axis
Treating the sentence as a comprehension passage instead of a word bank

English Q.5 of this shift underlines the word inside its own sentence and asks for the antonym of avariciousness, the arrangement reversed. A plain word-to-antonym item, with no sentence at all, is at 9 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.12, where the given word is Miserable.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Antonyms — all 102 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.