SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 16 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. Piquant

(a)Bland
(b)Spicy
(c)Zesty
(d)Tart

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Piquant means having a pleasantly sharp or spicy taste. It comes from the French piquer, to prick or sting.

The opposite of a sharp, stimulating taste is bland: mild, lacking strong flavour.

Spicy, zesty and tart all describe sharp flavours, so they side with piquant → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Spicy — Spicy is a direct synonym of piquant: strongly flavoured, often hot. Choosing it answers a synonym question that was not asked.
(c)
Zesty — Zesty means having a strong, pleasant, somewhat spicy flavour; zest is the outer peel of citrus fruit. It agrees with piquant rather than opposing it.
(d)
Tart — Tart means sharp or acid in taste, like an unripe apple. That is a sour sharpness rather than a spicy one, but it is still sharp, so it cannot oppose piquant.

Concept

Piquant has two senses. In food it means pleasantly sharp or spicy. Figuratively it means pleasantly stimulating, as in a piquant detail in a story.

Bland reverses both. Bland food is mild and flavourless, and a bland speech or personality is dull and unremarkable.

That double match is what makes bland the antonym, rather than merely a word for mild food.

The same French verb, piquer, gives English the noun pique, a fit of irritation, and the phrase to pique someone's interest, meaning to arouse it.

Key facts

Piquant means pleasantly sharp or spicy in taste, or pleasantly stimulating to the mind.
It comes from the French piquer, to prick or sting.
Bland means lacking strong flavour, or dull and unremarkable.

Study next

Taste adjectives and their shades: tart, tangy, pungent, savouryPique and piqued: to pique someone's interest is to arouse itBland in its figurative sense: a bland statement, a bland smile

Common traps

Choosing tart because it sounds least like piquant. Sourness is still a sharp taste.
Knowing piquant only as spicy and missing its figurative sense of pleasantly stimulating.

A bare word with an antonym instruction, and three options that share its sense of sharp flavour.

Incessant, at English Q.2 of this shift, is built the same way, with constant, ceaseless and perpetual all siding with the prompt word.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

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