Question

Choose the word which best expresses the meaning of the italicised part of the sentence.
The petals of the flowers are usually conspicuous to attract birds for pollination.
a) Prominent
b) Beautiful
c) Colourful
d) Scented

Answer 1

Hint: Conspicuous is an adjective which lexically means something that is visible or seen or noticeable by the naked eye.

Complete answer:
Conspicuous is a Latin origin word, it can be used in a sentence like ‘She felt very conspicuous in her pink coat.’ Now that we know the meaning, origin, and usage of the term in the question, we can now proceed with understanding the explanations of all the four alternatives given to us, one by one.
Option ‘a’, prominent, as we know, is an adjective and means projecting from something or protuberant.
We know that beautiful, in option b, means ‘pleasing the senses or mind, in an aesthetically sound manner’
Option c, colorful, we know, means ‘having much or varied colors or bright.’
And lastly, scented, option d, is an adjective and is explained as ‘having a pleasant scent.’
With the explanations above, we can conclude that Option ‘a’ is the right answer because “prominent” means something that is very noticeable, which is very similar or synonymous to the meaning of the given word in the question ‘conspicuous’; hence the first alternative is the correct answer. Therefore making the remaining options b,c, and d incorrect

Note:
In this question, all the alternatives might look replaceable with the italicised term, but we need to find the word which has a highly similar definition with ‘conspicuous.’