Synonyms & Antonyms

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Vocabulary questions cannot be reasoned out — you either know the word or you do not. What you can do is study words in pairs and groups rather than one at a time, and learn the few prefixes that let you decode an unfamiliar word under pressure.

Prefixes That Reverse Meaning

Prefix	Sense	Examples
un-, in-, im-, il-, ir-	not	unfair, incapable, impossible, illegal, irregular
dis-	opposite of	disagree, dishonest, disappear
mis-	wrongly	mislead, misjudge, misplace
anti-	against	antisocial, anticlockwise
trans-	across, through	transparent, transport, transmit
bene-	good	benefit, benevolent, beneficial
mal-	bad	malnutrition, malpractice, malfunction

Decode by parts. Trans- means "through" and -parent relates to appearing, so transparent means light passes through — which immediately gives you the opposite of opaque, even if you have never formally learned the pair.

High-Frequency Antonym Pairs

Word	Antonym	Word	Antonym
opaque	transparent	scarce	abundant
ancient	modern	humble	arrogant
barren	fertile	genuine	fake
brave	cowardly	lenient	strict
concise	lengthy	optimist	pessimist
expand	contract	praise	criticise
frugal	extravagant	victory	defeat

Words With More Than One Sense

Short common words are examined more often than long rare ones, because they carry several meanings and the options can pull in different directions:

Word	Senses	Synonyms by sense
hard	solid / difficult / harsh	firm, tough · difficult · severe
light	not heavy / illumination / pale	weightless · glow · faint
fine	excellent / thin / penalty	good · delicate · fee
sound	noise / healthy / reliable	noise · fit · valid

Worked Examples from Real Papers

TS Police Constable 2022 — Q6

The synonym of "hard" is (beautiful / firm / soft / weak)

"Hard" has several senses, so scan the options for one that matches any of them.
Soft and weak are opposites, and beautiful is unrelated.
Firm matches the "solid, not yielding" sense.
Answer: firm.
Method: two of the four options are usually antonyms rather than synonyms. Discarding them first leaves a straight choice.

TS Police Constable 2022 — Q10

The antonym of "opaque" is (Fragile / Partial / Transparent / Broken)

Opaque means light cannot pass through.
Its direct opposite is transparent — light passes through completely.
Fragile and broken concern strength, not light, and partial is unrelated.
Answer: Transparent.
Note: the near-miss here would be translucent, which lets some light through. It is not among the options, but the opaque–translucent–transparent trio is worth learning as a set.

Check that the option is the right part of speech. If the question word is an adjective, the answer must be an adjective. This alone eliminates a distractor in many vocabulary questions.

Also see: Reading Comprehension · Subject-Verb Agreement · Tenses