SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 12 September 2025, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 3 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 13 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Select the most appropriate antonym of the given word. Puissant

(a)Feeble
(b)Robust
(c)Powerful
(d)Strong

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Puissant is a literary word for powerful or mighty. Its noun is puissance, power.

An antonym needs the opposite pole: lacking power or strength. Feeble means weak, without physical or other force → option (a).

Robust, Powerful and Strong all stand on the same side as puissant, so they are synonyms, not antonyms.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Robust — Robust means strong and sturdy. It is a near-synonym of puissant, so choosing it answers a synonym question the item did not ask.
(c)
Powerful — Powerful is the plain-English meaning of puissant itself. The stem asks for the antonym, so the word's own definition cannot be the answer.
(d)
Strong — Strong is another synonym, the everyday word for having power. It points the same way as puissant, not against it.

Concept

An antonym item has two steps. First fix the word's sense, then find the option that points the opposite way.

Puissant came into English from French and is related to potent: both go back to a Latin verb meaning 'to be able'. So the sense is power.

Robust, Powerful and Strong agree with each other and with puissant. Feeble stands alone on the other side, which confirms the sense you fixed.

Puissant is literary rather than everyday English. If the meaning will not come, the shape of the options helps: three of them are near-synonyms of one another, and one points the other way.

Key facts

Puissant means powerful or mighty.
Its noun is puissance, power or might.
Feeble means lacking physical strength or force, weak.
Robust, powerful and strong are all synonyms of puissant.

Study next

Power words and their opposites, such as potent and impotent, mighty and punyOne-word substitutes built on power, such as omnipotent, 'having unlimited power'Near-synonyms of feeble, such as frail, infirm and debilitated

Common traps

Picking Powerful because it is the word's meaning, forgetting that the stem asks for the antonym
Choosing Robust because it feels less direct than Powerful and Strong, when it is still a synonym

The antonym of strong is keyed Weak at 12 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.7, where Mighty and Rugged sit among the wrong options — the same shape as this item, the answer seated beside words that agree with the stem word.

'Having unlimited power' is keyed Omnipotent at 18 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.11.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Antonyms — all 137 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.