Question

Select the most appropriate word which can substitute the given description:
Persons living at the same time.
a. colleagues
b. contemporaries
c. ancestors
d. forefathers

Answer 1

Hint: Look through the given phrase and understand its meaning. Use it in a sentence to completely understand its meaning. Make sure to differentiate between two synonyms if they seem similar. Then, choose the correct word accordingly.

Complete answer: In grammar, a substitute is used as a word to replace a word that serves as a specific kind of replacement. When one word replaces an entire phrase and still retains the original meaning, it is called a ‘substitute noun’. For example, the phrase ‘the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for’ can be summarised by the word ‘serendipity’. The only way to identify them correctly is to memorise them or use etymology to guess them as accurately as possible. The given phrase refers to changing the structure of something to make something different out of it.

The given phrase describes a group of people who are alive at the same time as you are, making them more or less your age. This is a broad category.
Let us go through the available options:
a. colleagues - The word ‘colleagues’ refers to ‘persons with whom one works in a profession or business’, so this word does not have the same meaning as the given phrase. It does not mean the same thing. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
b. contemporaries - The word ‘contemporaries’ refers to ‘persons or thing living or existing at the same time as another’, so this word has the same meaning as the given phrase. It means the same thing. This is the required answer. So, (b) is the correct option.
c. ancestors - The word ‘ancestors’ refers to ‘any person from whom one is descended’, so this word does not have the same meaning as the given phrase. It does not mean the same thing. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
d. forefathers - The word ‘forefathers’ refers to a member of the past generations of one's family or people’, so this word does not have the same meaning as the given phrase. It does not mean the same thing. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.

Note: Some frequently used synonyms of contemporaries are associate, colleague, compeer while antonyms are preceding, succeeding, old etc.