SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 21 September 2025, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 5 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.

Which word could best replace "immutable" in the phrase "...the immutable majesty of the mountains..." without significantly changing the meaning?

(a)Transient
(b)Unchanging
(c)Diminishing
(d)Fragile

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Immutable means unable to change: im- (not) + mutable (changeable), from Latin mutare, 'to change', the root of mutate and mutation.

The phrase sets it against human fragility: frail, passing climbers on one side, mountains that stay as they are on the other. Unchanging keeps that contrast when you swap it in → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Transient — Transient means lasting only a short time, the opposite of immutable. It would make the mountains as passing as the climbers and erase the contrast.
(c)
Diminishing — Diminishing means growing less, which is itself a change. Immutable rules out change of any kind, so it cannot mean shrinking.
(d)
Fragile — Fragile is the word the sentence gives the human side, 'human fragility'. Moving it to the mountains would make both sides frail and leave no contrast.

Concept

A replace-the-word item asks for a synonym that survives the sentence: swap it in, and the meaning must hold.

Start from the root. Mut- comes from Latin mutare, 'to change', as in mutate, mutation and mutable. The prefix im- negates it, so immutable is 'not changeable'.

Then check the frame. The sentence contrasts human fragility with the mountains' majesty. Unchanging keeps the mountains on the lasting side; Transient, Diminishing and Fragile would each pull them over to the human side.

Immutable is slightly stronger than unchanging: it means incapable of change, not just unchanged so far. The question asks only for a replacement 'without significantly changing the meaning', and Unchanging meets that.

Key facts

Immutable means unchanging over time, or unable to be changed.
It comes from Latin in- (not) + mutabilis (changeable), from mutare, 'to change'.
Mutable, mutate and mutation share the same root.
Transient, the opposite option here, means lasting only a short time.

Study next

Words from Latin mutare: mutable, mutation, commute, permutationAntonym pairs on the permanence scale: immutable and transient, perpetual and ephemeral

Common traps

Picking Fragile because it sits in the same sentence, when the sentence gives it to the human side
Linking immutable to mute (silent), which comes from a different Latin word, mutus

The same closing sentence of the passage is quoted at 21 Sep 2025, 16:00, English Q.3 (this shift), which asks about dialectic.

A word-in-context item from another 2025 passage is 15 Sep 2025, 12:30, English Q.22 (banality, keyed Triviality).

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.