Select the most appropriate ANTONYM of the given word. Bombastic

Correct — B. Bombastic describes language rather than character: high-sounding words inflated far beyond the thought behind them.

Reverse the inflation and you get plainness. Simple language says the thing without swelling it, which puts simple directly opposite bombastic on the axis of style.

Hold the pair as bombastic prose against simple prose: option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Elevated — Elevated style is lofty and dignified — a near neighbour of bombastic rather than its opposite. Both describe raised language, so it reverses nothing.
• (c)
  Wicked — Wicked means evil, so its opposite runs on morality: virtuous, good. Bombastic is a judgement about how a person writes or speaks, not about character.
• (d)
  Pastoral — Pastoral means of the countryside, or belonging to a pastor's work. Neither sense reverses the idea of inflated language.

The word grows out of bombast, which originally meant cotton padding used to stuff out clothing. The metaphor is the meaning: padded speech.

So bombastic criticises style — grand words carrying little content — and any true antonym must also be a word about style.

Simple is that word: unadorned, saying only what is meant. Plain, restrained and unpretentious would all serve equally.

The distractors here are drawn from three separate fields: style, morality and rural setting. Only one of them meets bombastic on its own ground.

Key facts

• Bombastic means high-sounding but carrying little real meaning.
• Bombast originally meant cotton wool used as padding in clothes.
• Simple, plain and unpretentious are all opposites of bombastic on the axis of style.

Common traps

• Picking elevated because it sounds complimentary beside a critical word
• Reading bombastic as loud or aggressive, and reaching for a calmness word

No directly related past PYQ was found.