SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 16 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. Taut

(a)Torn
(b)Slack
(c)Tight
(d)Flaccid

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Taut means stretched or pulled tight, with no slack in it — a taut rope, a taut wire, taut muscles.

Tight carries the same idea: held firmly, stretched, not loose. Substitute it into any of those phrases and the meaning survives, which is the test a synonym has to pass.

Two of the remaining words, slack and flaccid, sit at the far end of that same scale — they reverse taut rather than match it. That leaves option (c) standing alone.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Torn — Torn means ripped or split apart. It belongs to the same world of material under stress, but it names the failure rather than the tension — a taut rope has not torn.
(b)
Slack — Slack is the direct antonym of taut: loose, hanging, not pulled tight. It is the right answer to the opposite question.
(d)
Flaccid — Flaccid means soft and limp, lacking firmness. Like slack it sits at the loose end of the same scale, so it reverses taut instead of matching it.

Concept

A synonym item asks which word could replace the given word without changing the sense. The efficient check is substitution — put each option into a phrase the given word fits.

A taut rope is a tight rope. A torn rope, a slack rope and a flaccid rope each say something else.

The decoy pattern in this set is worth naming. The options are all drawn from one semantic field — tension in a material — and half of them point the wrong way along it. Recognising the field is not enough, you have to check the direction.

Taut also has a figurative use — a taut thriller, taut nerves — meaning tightly controlled or tense. Tight covers that sense too, which is why it works as the general synonym rather than only the physical one.

Key facts

Taut means stretched tight, with no slack.
Slack and flaccid are antonyms of taut, not synonyms.
Flaccid means soft and limp, lacking firmness.

Study next

Antonyms planted inside a synonym option setAdjectives of tension and looseness: taut, rigid, slack, flaccid, limpHomophone pairs worth separating: taut and taught, principal and principle

Common traps

Marking the first word that belongs to the same subject area as taut, without checking which way it points.
Confusing taut with taught, the past tense of teach.

The stem is the bare 'synonym of the given word' — one adjective, four options, no sentence. The same antonym-in-the-set trick runs on 09 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.14, where Abundant is keyed to Ample while Scarce and Barren sit in the list.
The plain ANTONYM stem is English Q.12 of this same shift.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.