SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 13 of 100

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 word in the brackets to fill in the blank. She left the party ______ because of her parents’ strict time restrictions. [late]

(a)early
(b)suffer
(c)small
(d)exit

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The bracket names the word to reverse — [late] — and the blank must take its opposite.

The blank sits after 'left the party', where it works as an adverb of time: she left late, or she left early. Only option (a) sits on that scale.

The rest of the sentence agrees. Strict time restrictions set by her parents are a reason to leave sooner than the others, not later.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
suffer — 'Suffer' is a verb, and the slot needs an adverb. 'She left the party suffer' is not English, and suffering is in no sense the opposite of lateness.
(c)
small — 'Small' answers how big, not when. It is an adjective of size, while the opposite of late has to be a word on the time scale.
(d)
exit — 'Exit' repeats the leaving, it does not date it. It names the same action the sentence already carries in 'left', and it is not the opposite of late in any use.

Concept

An antonym-in-the-blank item asks two things at once, and both have to be answered.

Meaning first: what is the opposite of the bracketed word? Late, used of arriving or leaving, opposes early.

Grammar second: does that opposite fit the slot? The blank follows a verb and modifies it, so only an adverb will serve — and 'early' works as both adjective and adverb.

Options that fail either test go out, which is why three of these four can be dropped without weighing their meaning very hard.

'Late' carries senses that take other opposites — a late king is a dead one, whose opposite is living. The sentence, not the bracket alone, tells you which sense is in play.

Key facts

Early is both an adjective, as in 'an early train', and an adverb, as in 'she left early'.
The antonym of late depends on its sense: early for time, living for the sense 'deceased'.
Exit is a noun or a verb meaning to go out, not a word on the early-late scale.

Study next

Antonym items where the blank fixes the word class as well as the meaningWords with more than one sense and therefore more than one antonym, such as light, fine and lateAdverbs of time in end position: early, late, soon, already

Common traps

Choosing 'exit' because it belongs with leaving a party, when the stem asks for the opposite of late.
Answering the bracket in isolation and never testing the word against the blank's grammar.
Reading the instruction as SYNONYM, when the stem prints ANTONYM in capitals for a reason.

The bracketed-antonym wrapper repeats with the same instruction line and a different pair: 13 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.15 ([hit] becomes missed), 18 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.9 ([lost] becomes found), and 25 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.19 ([SHALLOW] becomes deep).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.