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CSS 2021 — Synonyms & Antonyms (Solved)

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2021 was notorious for obscure words. The published lists recover 9 synonyms + 9 antonyms; the 20th pair isn't reliably recorded anywhere. Option sets were never published, so each question shows the word and the keyed answer. Where a key circulating online contradicts the dictionary, it is corrected below.

(a) Synonyms

1. DEMIURGE

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Answer: Creator

  • Urdu: خالق، صانعِ کائنات
  • Meaning (n.): a creator or maker of the world (in Platonic philosophy); a powerful creative force
  • Synonyms: creator, maker, architect, deity, author, originator
  • Antonyms: destroyer, creature, annihilator
  • Sentences:
    1. Plato's demiurge shapes the world out of pre-existing chaos.
    2. Steve Jobs was seen as the demiurge of the smartphone age.

2. TOUSLED

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Answer: Dishevelled

  • Urdu: بکھرے ہوئے (بال)، الجھا ہوا
  • Meaning (adj.): (of hair) untidy or rumpled
  • Synonyms: dishevelled, rumpled, messy, unkempt, tangled, windswept
  • Antonyms: neat, groomed, tidy, combed, sleek
  • Sentences:
    1. He came to the door with tousled hair and sleepy eyes.
    2. The wind left her hair tousled.

3. HAGIOGRAPHIC

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Answer: Adulatory

  • Urdu: مبالغہ آمیز تعریفی (سوانح)، بزرگانہ
  • Meaning (adj.): treating its subject with undue reverence, like a saint's biography
  • Synonyms: adulatory, eulogistic, flattering, idolising, reverential, laudatory
  • Antonyms: critical, debunking, disparaging, objective, balanced
  • Sentences:
    1. The official biography was so hagiographic that historians dismissed it.
    2. State TV ran a hagiographic documentary on the ruler.

4. ALLUVIAL

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Answer: Deposited by rivers / sedimentary

  • Urdu: دریائی مٹی سے بنا، رسوبی
  • Meaning (adj.): made of clay, silt and sand left by flowing water
  • Synonyms: sedimentary, silt-laden, deposited, fluvial, loamy
  • Antonyms: eroded, rocky, bedrock, barren
  • Sentences:
    1. The alluvial plains of the Indus are among the most fertile in Asia.
    2. Gold is sometimes found in alluvial deposits.

5. MISCEGENATION

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Answer: Interbreeding / racial mixing

  • Urdu: مختلف نسلوں کا اختلاط (تاریخی اصطلاح)
  • Meaning (n.): a historical, now offensive term for marriage or relations between people of different races
  • Synonyms: intermixture, interbreeding, crossbreeding, intermarriage
  • Antonyms: segregation, racial separation, endogamy
  • Sentences:
    1. Apartheid-era South Africa had laws against so-called miscegenation.
    2. Historians study how colonial laws policed miscegenation.
  • Note: the term has racist origins. Use it only in historical or analytical contexts.

6. BRICOLAGE

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Answer: Mixture / assemblage

  • Urdu: ملغوبہ، مختلف چیزوں سے جوڑ کر بنائی گئی چیز
  • Meaning (n.): something built from a diverse range of available things
  • Synonyms: assemblage, medley, patchwork, hotchpotch, collage, mishmash
  • Antonyms: uniformity, a single-source design, homogeneity, purity
  • Sentences:
    1. Karachi's architecture is a bricolage of colonial, Art Deco and modern styles.
    2. The novel is a bricolage of letters, diaries and news clips.

7. DERACINATE

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Answer: Uproot

  • Urdu: جڑ سے اکھاڑنا، بے وطن کرنا
  • Meaning (v.): to tear up by the roots; to displace someone from their native environment
  • Synonyms: uproot, displace, dislodge, eradicate, expel, exile
  • Antonyms: plant, root, settle, implant, establish
  • Sentences:
    1. Partition deracinated millions of families on both sides of the border.
    2. The storm deracinated old trees along the canal.

8. SOT

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Answer: Drunkard

  • Urdu: شرابی، نشے کا عادی
  • Meaning (n.): a habitual drunkard
  • Synonyms: drunkard, drunk, inebriate, tippler, alcoholic, boozer
  • Antonyms: teetotaller, abstainer, non-drinker
  • Sentences:
    1. The novel's villain is an old sot who squanders the family fortune.
    2. The tavern was full of sots.

9. VISCERAL

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Answer: Instinctive / gut

  • Urdu: جبلّی، اندرونی جذبات سے متعلق، دل کی گہرائی سے
  • Meaning (adj.): relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect; relating to the internal organs
  • Synonyms: instinctive, intuitive, gut, deep-seated, emotional, primal
  • Antonyms: intellectual, rational, reasoned, cerebral, logical
  • Sentences:
    1. Voters had a visceral reaction to the price hike.
    2. The film's violence provoked a visceral response.

(b) Antonyms

10. ANACHRONISTIC

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Answer: Modern / contemporary

  • Urdu: زمانے سے پیچھے، فرسودہ، غیر عصری
  • Meaning (adj.): belonging to a period other than the one portrayed; old-fashioned
  • Synonyms: outdated, archaic, obsolete, antiquated, old-fashioned, behind the times
  • Antonyms: modern, contemporary, up to date, current, present-day
  • Sentences:
    1. Critics call the Police Act of 1861 anachronistic for a modern state.
    2. A wristwatch on a Mughal soldier in the film was anachronistic.

11. NYMPHOMANIAC

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Answer: Frigid / sexually uninterested (keyed idea)

  • Urdu: شہوت پرست عورت (پرانی طبی اصطلاح)
  • Meaning (n./adj.): (dated, clinical) a woman with abnormally excessive sexual desire
  • Synonyms: (dated clinical) hypersexual
  • Antonyms: frigid, chaste, celibate, abstinent
  • Sentence: Modern psychiatry has replaced the Victorian label "nymphomaniac" with "hypersexuality disorder."
  • Note: the term is outdated and considered sexist. Learn it only for recognition.

12. CLERISY

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Answer: Laity / the uneducated

  • Urdu: علماء و دانشور طبقہ
  • Meaning (n.): a distinct class of learned or literary people; the intelligentsia
  • Synonyms: intelligentsia, literati, the learned, scholars, intellectuals
  • Antonyms: laity, the masses, the uneducated, commoners
  • Sentences:
    1. Coleridge hoped a national clerisy would educate the country.
    2. The clerisy of Delhi gathered at Ghalib's mushairas.

13. FERAL

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Answer: Domesticated / tame

  • Urdu: جنگلی، وحشی (پالتو سے جنگلی بنا)
  • Meaning (adj.): (of an animal) in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity
  • Synonyms: wild, untamed, savage, undomesticated, fierce, ferocious
  • Antonyms: domesticated, tame, docile, pet, gentle
  • Sentences:
    1. Feral dogs roam the outskirts of the city.
    2. Feral cats have wiped out birds on some islands.

14. DEMAGOGUE

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Answer: Statesman / conciliator

  • Urdu: عوام کو بھڑکانے والا لیڈر، شعلہ بیان
  • Meaning (n.): a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular prejudice rather than rational argument
  • Synonyms: rabble-rouser, agitator, firebrand, populist, provocateur
  • Antonyms: statesman, conciliator, peacemaker, moderate
  • Sentences:
    1. The demagogue blamed minorities for every economic problem.
    2. History warns us against demagogues who promise easy answers.

15. BIBULOUS

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Answer: Sober / teetotal

  • Urdu: مے نوش، شراب کا رسیا
  • Meaning (adj.): excessively fond of drinking alcohol
  • Synonyms: alcoholic, intemperate, drunken, sottish, hard-drinking
  • Antonyms: sober, teetotal, abstemious, temperate
  • Sentences:
    1. The bibulous guests stayed long after dinner ended.
    2. He was a bibulous poet who wrote best when drunk.
  • Correction: some lists key "nonabsorbent", which uses an archaic sense of the word (absorbent). The standard meaning is "fond of drink", so the antonym is sober.

16. PABULUM

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Answer: Substantive / stimulating content

  • Urdu: بے مزہ، بے روح مواد (فکری غذا)
  • Meaning (n.): bland or insipid intellectual matter or entertainment; (lit.) food
  • Synonyms: pap, drivel, insipid fare, twaddle, trivia
  • Antonyms: substance, stimulating content, meat, depth
  • Sentences:
    1. Prime-time talk shows serve political pabulum rather than analysis.
    2. Textbooks full of pabulum bore bright students.
  • Correction: some lists key "trash" as the antonym, but pabulum already means worthless fare, so trash is closer to a synonym.

17. QUISLING

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Answer: Loyalist / patriot

  • Urdu: غدار، دشمن کا آلہ کار
  • Meaning (n.): a traitor who collaborates with an occupying enemy. Named after Vidkun Quisling of Norway.
  • Synonyms: traitor, collaborator, turncoat, Judas, betrayer, renegade
  • Antonyms: loyalist, patriot, resistance fighter, supporter
  • Sentences:
    1. Mir Jafar is remembered in the subcontinent as a quisling.
    2. The occupying army installed a quisling government.

18. CHIAROSCURO

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Answer: Uniformity / flatness (of light)

  • Urdu: روشنی اور سائے کا تضاد (مصوری)
  • Meaning (n.): strong contrast between light and dark in painting, photography or film
  • Synonyms: light-and-shade contrast, shading, tonal contrast
  • Antonyms: uniform lighting, flatness, evenness, monotone
  • Sentences:
    1. Caravaggio's chiaroscuro makes his figures leap out of the dark.
    2. The film uses chiaroscuro to create suspense.

Source: CSS Exam Desk year-wise list