English Grammar: 95 MCQs with Answers

The word 'hate' means to feel a strong dislike or aversion towards someone or something. Among the given options, 'dislike' carries almost the same sense and is therefore its closest synonym, although 'hate' expresses a much stronger degree of feeling. 'Docile' means obedient and easy to manage; 'creep' means to move slowly and quietly, or an unpleasant person; and 'anger' is a temporary emotional state of displeasure rather than a settled aversion. Since a synonym must match the meaning and not merely the emotion, 'dislike' is the correct answer.

The correct answer is 'into, at'. The preposition 'into' shows movement from outside to inside, so a boy who falls from the edge of a well falls 'into' it; 'in' would only show a static position already inside. For clock time, English uses the preposition 'at' — at 10 o'clock, at noon, at midnight. 'On' is used with days and dates such as on Monday or on 5 June, while 'in' is used with months, years and longer periods such as in May or in 2022. Hence option (2) is correct.

In the sentence 'Harish himself wrote the poem', the underlined words are 'Harish' and 'himself'. 'Harish' is a proper noun as it names a particular person. 'Himself' here is an emphatic (emphasising) pronoun, used to lay stress on the subject and show that no one else wrote the poem. The same word can also act as a reflexive pronoun when the action returns to the doer, as in 'He hurt himself'. Since a reflexive or emphatic pronoun is still a pronoun, the correct answer is Noun, Pronoun.

The adjective 'far' has two sets of degrees in modern English. When distance is meant, the forms are far – farther – farthest, and when order, extent or additional amount is meant, the forms are far – further – furthest. Therefore the superlative degree of 'far' is 'farthest'. 'Farther' is only the comparative form, while 'most far' and 'most farther' are not accepted, because adjectives that already have irregular comparative and superlative forms are never compared again with 'more' or 'most'. Hence option (2) is correct.

The young one of a bear is called a 'cub'. English has separate words for the young ones of different animals, and these are commonly tested in vocabulary questions. 'Cub' is used for the young of a bear, lion, tiger, fox and wolf. A 'calf' is the young of a cow, elephant, whale or buffalo; a 'fawn' is the young of a deer; and a 'foal' is the young of a horse, which is further called a colt if male and a filly if female. Hence the correct answer is 'cub'.

The correct answer is 'did, do'. The word 'yesterday' shows that the sentence is in the simple past tense, so the past auxiliary 'did' is required to frame the question. A very important rule of English grammar is that when an auxiliary such as do, does or did is used, the main verb always remains in its bare infinitive form, that is, the first form. Therefore we say 'What did you do with this knife yesterday?' and never 'What did you did'. Hence option (3) is correct.

In the sentence 'The milk has turned sour', the underlined word 'sour' is an adjective. The verb 'turn' is here used as a linking or copular verb, meaning 'to become', and a linking verb is always followed by a subject complement. When that complement describes the quality or state of the subject, it must be an adjective and not an adverb. So 'sour' describes the milk, telling us what the milk has become. Other common linking verbs are be, seem, appear, look, feel, grow and become.

The correct answer is 'Hot'. An antonym is a word opposite in meaning, and the natural opposite of 'cool' on the temperature scale is 'hot'. 'Cold' is not the best answer because cold and cool lie on the same side of the scale, cold being simply a more intense degree of coolness. 'Colder' and 'warmer' are comparative forms, and a positive degree word should be matched with another word in the positive degree. Since the question asks for a direct opposite of the same degree, 'Hot' is correct.

The correct spelling is 'bungalow'. The word came into English from the Hindi word 'bangla', meaning a house in the Bengal style, and it is written with 'u' in the first two syllables and 'ow' at the end. The other options are all misspellings — 'bungalowe' wrongly adds a final 'e', while 'bangalow' and 'bangelow' wrongly use 'a' or 'e' in place of 'u'. Words borrowed from Indian languages often have fixed English spellings that must simply be memorised. Hence option (4) is correct.

The sentence is divided as: Keats is (A) / a quiet (B) / good poet (C) / among the romantic poets (D). The error lies in part B. The word 'quiet' is an adjective meaning silent or making little noise, whereas the sense required here is 'fairly' or 'to a considerable degree', which is expressed by the adverb 'quite'. The correct sentence is therefore 'Keats is a quite good poet among the romantic poets.' Such pairs of similar looking words — quiet and quite, desert and dessert — are frequently tested. Hence the answer is B.