SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 26 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 12 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 underlined word in the given sentence. This library building is very high and has 25 floors.

(a)Hale
(b)Low
(c)Sturdy
(d)Elevated

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The underlining is lost in the response sheet, but the word under test is high, used of the building's vertical extent.

Low reverses exactly that: high and low are the standard opposed pair for height, and for price, volume, rank and temperature besides → option (b).

The other three words measure something else entirely — health, strength, position — so none of them can be the opposite of high.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Hale — Hale means healthy and robust, and survives mostly in the phrase hale and hearty. Its opposite is ill, and it is not said of buildings at all.
(c)
Sturdy — Sturdy means strongly built, so its opposite is flimsy or frail. A building can be sturdy at any height, which is why the word is on a different scale.
(d)
Elevated — Elevated means raised or lifted up, which puts it on the same side as high, not the opposite side. It is the near-synonym planted to catch a fast reader.

Concept

An antonym item is settled by asking which dimension the word measures, then finding the option that reverses that same dimension.

Here high measures vertical extent. Hale measures health, sturdy measures strength, elevated measures the same dimension but in the same direction. Only low turns the dimension around.

That test also disposes of the commonest error in these sets, the near-synonym offered as though it were an opposite.

English usually prefers tall and short for buildings. Short is not on the list, and low is the only word among the four that reverses height, so the item still has one answer.

Key facts

Low is the standard opposite of high across height, price, volume, rank and temperature.
Hale means healthy, as in hale and hearty, and is used of people rather than of structures.
Elevated means raised, so it sits alongside high rather than against it.

Study next

Near-synonyms planted in antonym sets, and how to spot themWords that look like commoner words: hale against hail, sturdy against studyAntonym pairs that change with the sense of the word, such as light and dark against light and heavy

Common traps

Choosing Elevated because it is the least familiar of the four words.
Hunting for short, not finding it, and then abandoning low as too plain.
Reading hale as a misprint for hail or half.

SSC embeds the word in a sentence so the sense is fixed before you look at the choices, then offers one synonym among the three wrong options.

Antonyms also run at English Q.4 (access takes denial), Q.7 (enthralled takes bored) and Q.17 (profuse takes scarce) of this 26 Sep 2024, 9:00 am sitting.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.