SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 1 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 6 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 synonym of the given word. Fatal

(a)Additional
(b)Easy
(c)Deadly
(d)Jovial

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The prompt word is fatal, and its core dictionary sense is 'causing death'. A fatal accident is one in which somebody dies.

Deadly carries exactly that sense: able to cause, or causing, death.

No other option touches death or harm at all, so meaning alone decides this one → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Additional — Additional means extra, added on to what is already there. It is a word about quantity, and has no sense of harm or death.
(b)
Easy — Easy means requiring little effort. If anything it points away from fatal, which describes an outcome nobody survives.
(d)
Jovial — Jovial means cheerful and good-humoured. It is the opposite in tone, and is the option that catches a candidate guessing on sound.

Concept

Fatal belongs to a small family of adjectives that all mean 'causing death': deadly, lethal, mortal, terminal.

They differ in what they attach to. A wound is fatal or mortal, a poison is lethal or deadly, an illness is terminal.

Fatal also has a weaker, everyday sense — 'leading to ruin', as in a fatal flaw in an argument. SSC's single-word synonym items want the primary sense, which here is the death sense.

Only one of the four options is even in the semantic neighbourhood, so this is a recall item rather than a shade-of-meaning item.

Key facts

Fatal means causing death — a fatal injury is one that kills.
Deadly, lethal, mortal and terminal are its nearest synonyms.
Fatal has a second, weaker sense of 'ruinous', as in a fatal mistake.

Study next

Fatal versus fateful — fateful means decisive or momentous, not deadlyWhere each death-adjective collocates: lethal dose, mortal wound, terminal illnessAdjective synonym sets that repeat in SSC papers

Common traps

Reading fatal in its weaker 'ruinous' sense and hunting for a word meaning disastrous
Confusing fatal with fateful, which means momentous rather than deadly

SSC gives a bare word and four options with no sentence to steer you, so the primary sense is what is being tested.

The same shape is also asked 9 Sep 2024, 9:00, at English Q.5 (Toxic) and English Q.14 (Innuendo).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.