11 plus Antonyms questions

What an Antonyms question looks like

An Antonyms question gives your child one word, printed in capitals, and five options underneath, and asks which option means the opposite. What makes this format its own thing, rather than a version of the other 11 plus vocabulary types, is what the wrong options are: all four are near synonyms of the word in capitals, so the answer is the only option that does not sit with the rest. It is not the two bracketed groups of words where a child hunts for the most opposite pair across them, it is not a matching-word question, and it is not a question that offers five definitions or a sentence and asks which sense fits.

The words themselves cover a wide range. Some are words a Year 5 child already uses: ancient, honest, rough, calm, victory, remember. Others are met in books rather than conversation: fastidious, capricious, tacit, belligerent, ubiquitous. Nouns and verbs turn up as often as adjectives, so a question can rest on absorb, suppress, malice or hubris just as easily as on gloomy.

Example one: an adjective

GRACIOUS. The options are polite, kind, charming, rude, elegant.

Start by saying what gracious means in your own words: kind and pleasant towards other people. Now go along the row and ask of each option, does this reverse that, or does it agree with it? Polite agrees. Kind agrees. Charming agrees. Elegant agrees. Rude does not: it means impolite and disrespectful, which is gracious turned round.

The answer is rude.

The option that tempts a child here is kind, and it tempts precisely because it is a good match. A child who is reading quickly, or who has just come off a set of matching-word questions, picks the closest meaning out of habit. In this format the closest meaning is never the answer.

Example two: a verb

BEWILDER. The options are clarify, confuse, puzzle, baffle, mystify.

To bewilder someone is to confuse them completely. Four of these options say that same thing in slightly different ways: confuse, puzzle, baffle and mystify are all about leaving someone in a fog. Clarify is the one that goes the other way, because to clarify is to make something clear.

The answer is clarify.

Confuse is the trap, and it is a sharper trap than usual, because confuse is not merely close to bewilder, it is very nearly the definition of it. If a child has quietly translated the question into “which word means this?”, confuse is the word their eye lands on first.

Example three: a noun

DELUGE. The options are flood, trickle, downpour, torrent, cascade.

A deluge is an overwhelming rush of water. Flood, downpour, torrent and cascade all describe a great deal of water moving at once. A trickle is a thin, slow flow, so it is the one that reverses the idea.

The answer is trickle.

This example also shows something worth pointing out to a child: the answer is a completely different word, not the original with un- or dis- stuck on the front. Sometimes the opposite really is the negative form, as with reliable and unreliable, and sometimes it is nothing of the kind, as with tranquil and chaotic or diminutive and huge. Scanning for a prefix is not a method.

How to answer it

1. Read the word in capitals and say what it means in your own words before you look down at the options. If you go to the options first, the first familiar word will pull you towards it.
2. If the word is one you do not know, read all five options and look for the four that mean much the same as each other. That shared meaning is roughly what the word in capitals means, and the option left over is your answer.
3. Test your choice by putting the two words in the same sentence. If the sentence flips its sense when you swap one for the other, you have an opposite. If it more or less still holds, you have a synonym.
4. Check the four you rejected really do belong together. If two options both look like opposites, you have probably taken the word in the wrong sense, so go back and try its other meaning.
5. Answer for the sense the options support. Dull can mean boring, blunt or not bright, and only one of those senses will have four supporting options sitting around it.

Common mistakes

• Picking the closest meaning. This is by far the commonest error, and the format is built to invite it. Every wrong option is a near synonym, so the word that feels most right is always the one to reject.
• Hunting for a prefix. Un-, in-, dis- and il- sometimes give the answer, and sometimes they are the decoy. In one question the options include both unavoidable and avoidable, and only the second is the opposite of inevitable.
• Settling for a word that is merely negative. For grotesque, ugly feels like a strong answer because it sounds harsh, but it means the same as grotesque. Beautiful is the reversal. A word with an unpleasant tone is not automatically an opposite.
• Using only a word’s most familiar sense. Petty can mean unimportant or it can mean small-minded and mean. Obscure can mean unknown or hard to understand. The options decide which sense is in play, so read them before committing.
• Stopping at the first option that works. Only one option is genuinely the reverse. If a child has not glanced at the remaining options, they have no way of knowing whether they found the answer or an approximation of it.

How to practise 11 plus Antonyms questions

Reading is what actually builds this, because a child can only reverse a word they understand, and shades of meaning are picked up from seeing words used rather than from lists. Alongside that, short and regular beats long and occasional, which is the pattern we set out in how much 11 plus practice a child needs each day. When your child gets one wrong, ask them to say aloud what their chosen word means and what the word in capitals means. Nine times out of ten they hear for themselves that the two words agree rather than clash, and hearing it is worth more than being told. 11+ Daily has an Antonyms project alongside the other eleven plus vocabulary work, on laptop, tablet or phone, and the rest of the set is listed on our 11 plus English practice page. Every question is original to 11+ Daily, nothing is a past paper and nothing is licensed from another publisher, and the bank is re-checked in rounds.

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