SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 3 · 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 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 ANTONYM of the given word. Miserable

(a)Restrained
(b)Cheerful
(c)Settled
(d)Melodious

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Miserable means deeply unhappy or wretched. Its direct reverse is cheerful, which means visibly happy and in good spirits.

What is being tested is the axis, not the intensity. Miserable sits at the unhappy end of the happy-to-unhappy scale, so the answer has to sit at the happy end.

Only option (b) is a mood word at all. The other three belong to different axes — self-control, stability and sound — and a word on another axis cannot be an antonym however positive it feels.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Restrained — Restrained means held back or controlled. Its opposite is unrestrained, not unhappy, so it answers a question about temperament rather than about mood.
(c)
Settled — Settled means fixed, stable or resolved, and its opposite is unsettled. A person can be settled and miserable at the same time, so it does not reverse the given word.
(d)
Melodious — Melodious describes pleasant sound, not feeling. Being a positive word is the whole of its appeal here, and positivity is not opposition.

Concept

An antonym question asks for the reverse of the given word on the same axis of meaning — not for any word with the opposite feel.

Miserable is a mood adjective, so the correct option must be a mood adjective pointing the other way: cheerful, happy, joyful, elated.

The decoys in this set are pleasant-sounding adjectives borrowed from neighbouring axes. Restrained is about self-control, settled is about stability, melodious is about sound. Each reads positively, and none of them is a word about mood.

Miserable is also used the other way round in synonym items, where it is offered as a decoy against Cheerful. Learning the pair once serves both question types.

Key facts

Miserable means extremely unhappy or wretched.
Cheerful means noticeably happy and in good spirits.
An antonym must reverse the given word on its own axis of meaning, not merely feel positive.

Study next

Mood adjectives and their opposites: elated, dejected, jovial, morosePrefix-formed antonyms such as settled and unsettled, restrained and unrestrainedAdjectives that describe sound rather than feeling: melodious, mellifluous, cacophonous

Common traps

Picking any positive-sounding adjective instead of the one on the same axis.
Reading Miserable in its other sense, dismal or unpleasant as in miserable weather, and hunting for the opposite of that instead.

The stem is the bare 'ANTONYM of the given word' with a single adjective and no sentence around it. The same mood pairing runs in reverse on 11 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.19, where Cheerful is keyed as the synonym of Jovial and Miserable is one of the decoys.
A sentence-framed version of the same happy-sad axis is 13 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.12.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.