NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 1 Bharat Our Land (poem) — Vocabulary in Context

Book page 29–30 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.

Answer

Suffix	Meaning	Word from the poem	The line it comes from
-ous	full of, having the qualities of kindness	1. generous	“The generous Ganga is ours—” — gener- from Latin generosus, plus -ous: full of giving.
-ity	the state of being very old or ancient	2. antiquity	“Of hoary antiquity is Bharat” — antique (old) turned into the noun for the state of being old.
-est	superlative form	3. divinest	“The divinest music has been heard here” — divine pushed to its highest degree.
-less	without something	4. peerless	“she’s peerless, let’s praise her!” — a peer is an equal, so peerless means having none.

What suffixes do that prefixes do not: a prefix usually changes meaning (happy → unhappy), but a suffix usually changes the word class. -ity turns the adjective antique into a noun; -ous and -less turn nouns into adjectives; -est keeps the class but shifts the degree. Once you can see the suffix, you can predict how a new word will behave in a sentence even if you have never met it.

Did you know? Peer in peerless is the same word as in “judged by a jury of his peers” — an equal, not a person who looks. It has nothing to do with peer meaning to squint at something; those are two different words that happen to be spelt alike.

Q2.

II. Complete the following table by adding a different suffix to form new words. Also, create a sentence using the created word. One example has been done for you. -tion | the action or process of | Example: indicate—indication. The dark clouds were an indication that it would rain soon. 1. ______ -ive | quality or nature of | 2. ______ -ment | the action or result of | 3. ______ -ed | past-tense version of a verb | 4. ______

Answer

Suffix	Meaning	Root → new word	Sentence of my own
-tion	the action or process of	1. educate → education	The education Krishtakka gave herself at sixty-two changed how her whole family thought about learning.
-ive	quality or nature of	2. create → creative	Bharati’s creative use of a single refrain holds sixteen scattered lines together.
-ment	the action or result of	3. achieve → achievement	Reading a whole novel within one Dassara was an achievement nobody in the village had expected.
-ed	past-tense version of a verb	4. praise → praised	The class praised her translation of the poem into Kannada.

Tip on spelling: a silent e is usually dropped before a suffix beginning with a vowel — create + -ive gives creative, not “createive”; praise + -ed gives praised. But it is kept before a suffix beginning with a consonant — achieve + -ment gives achievement. That one rule settles most mistakes in this exercise.

Why the exercise asks for a sentence and not just a word: a suffix changes what a word can do grammatically. You cannot prove you have understood -ment until you have used achievement as a noun — with an article in front of it and a verb somewhere near. The sentence is the test, not the decoration.

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