SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 21 September 2025, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 2 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 11 September 2026.

Read the passage and answer the questions:
The annals of mountaineering history are adorned with figures whose daring transcended mere athleticism, embodying philosophical quests for transcendence against Earth's most formidable landscapes. Each mountaineer — whether treading the snows of Everest, the granite of Patagonia, or the arid heights of the Atlas Mountains — etched a distinct narrative of audacity and introspection.
“Tenzing Norgay” and “Sir Edmund Hillary’s” epochal 1953 Everest ascent immortalized human perseverance, but figures such as “Reinhold Messner” redefined the boundaries further. Rejecting supplemental oxygen, Messner’s minimalist ethos emphasized purity over conquest, portraying mountains not as trophies but as sentient entities commanding reverence. Similarly, “Junko Tabei”, the first woman to summit Everest, symbolized the intersection of resilience and quiet defiance in an era resistant to female adventurers.
The ethos of mountaineering diversified through the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Climbers like “Kilian Jornet”, blending ultra-marathon endurance with technical ascents, and “Nirmal Purja”, whose record-breaking summits shattered temporal assumptions, reveal a contemporary paradigm: mountains as arenas of rapid, almost transcendental athleticism. Meanwhile, indigenous climbers, long relegated to footnotes in expedition histories, increasingly assert their rightful place as stewards of sacred peaks.
Thus, the saga of mountaineering resists reduction to mere feats of strength. It weaves a tapestry of cultures, philosophies, and personal odysseys — each ascent a dialectic between human fragility and the immutable majesty of the mountains.

What is the meaning of the word "epochal" in the context: "Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary’s epochal 1953 Everest ascent..."

(a)Trivial
(b)Highly significant and historic
(c)Ordinary and recurrent
(d)Disastrous

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Epochal means marking an epoch: important enough to open a new chapter in history. In everyday use it means momentous, highly significant.

The sentence confirms it. The 1953 ascent immortalized human perseverance, so the passage is celebrating the climb as a landmark, not dismissing or mourning it.

Highly significant and historic is the sense that fits both the word and its sentence → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Trivial — Trivial is the opposite: of little worth or importance. A trivial climb would not have 'immortalized human perseverance', which is what the passage says this one did.
(c)
Ordinary and recurrent — Ordinary and recurrent fails on both halves. The ascent is a single dated event, 1953, and a climb that immortalized perseverance is not ordinary.
(d)
Disastrous — Disastrous borrows the danger of climbing, not the meaning of the word. Epochal carries no sense of harm, and the sentence praises the climb.

Concept

An epoch is a period of history marked by notable events, and epochal describes an event big enough to mark or begin one. Epoch-making is a near synonym.

In a meaning-in-context item, test the word against its sentence as well as your memory. Here the verb immortalized tells you the passage treats the 1953 climb as a turning point.

Trivial, and Ordinary and recurrent, point the opposite way. Disastrous swaps importance for harm.

Outside the passage, the 1953 climb by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary was the first confirmed ascent of Everest, which is why a writer can fairly call it epochal.

Key facts

Epochal means marking an epoch: highly significant, momentous.
Epoch-making is a near synonym of epochal.
Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first confirmed ascent of Everest in 1953.

Study next

Near synonyms of epochal: momentous, epoch-making, landmark, watershedWords at the other end of the scale: trivial, trifling, inconsequential

Common traps

Reading epoch as a repeating cycle and picking Ordinary and recurrent
Picking Disastrous from the danger of the subject rather than the meaning of the word

The word is asked inside its sentence from the passage, and that sentence carries the clue.

Another 2025 word-in-context item is 15 Sep 2025, 12:30, English Q.22 (banality, keyed Triviality, the noun of this item's wrong option Trivial).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Read the passage and answer the questions:
The annals of mountaineering history are adorned with figures whose daring transcended mere athleticism, embodying philosophical quests for transcendence against Earth's most formidable landscapes. Each mountaineer — whether treading the snows of Everest, the granite of Patagonia, or the arid heights of the Atlas Mountains — etched a distinct narrative of audacity and introspection.
“Tenzing Norgay” and “Sir Edmund Hillary’s” epochal 1953 Everest ascent immortalized human perseverance, but figures such as “Reinhold Messner” redefined the boundaries further. Rejecting supplemental oxygen, Messner’s minimalist ethos emphasized purity over conquest, portraying mountains not as trophies but as sentient entities commanding reverence. Similarly, “Junko Tabei”, the first woman to summit Everest, symbolized the intersection of resilience and quiet defiance in an era resistant to female adventurers.
The ethos of mountaineering diversified through the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Climbers like “Kilian Jornet”, blending ultra-marathon endurance with technical ascents, and “Nirmal Purja”, whose record-breaking summits shattered temporal assumptions, reveal a contemporary paradigm: mountains as arenas of rapid, almost transcendental athleticism. Meanwhile, indigenous climbers, long relegated to footnotes in expedition histories, increasingly assert their rightful place as stewards of sacred peaks.
Thus, the saga of mountaineering resists reduction to mere feats of strength. It weaves a tapestry of cultures, philosophies, and personal odysseys — each ascent a dialectic between human fragility and the immutable majesty of the mountains.