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NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 5 Nine Gold Medals (poem) — Vocabulary in Context

Book page 162–163 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.
I. The phrase ‘standing ovation’ is an example of an adjective–noun collocation. Identify two other similar examples from the poem. [Box on page 162: Collocation is a pair or group of words that habitually appear together.]
Answer

Two clear adjective–noun collocations from the poem: “beaming faces” and “old field”.

CollocationWhere it occursWhy it is a collocation and not just any adjective + noun
beaming faces“And a standing ovation and nine beaming faces” (stanza 8)Beaming habitually attaches to face, smile and grin. We do not say ‘a beaming hand’ or ‘a beaming shoulder’ — the pairing is fixed by usage, not by grammar.
old field“The spectators gathered around the old field” (stanza 2)A very common everyday pairing for a well-used sports ground.

Other acceptable answers from the poem: young boy (stanza 6), young women and men (stanza 2), resolved athletes (stanza 3), gold medals (stanza 8), finish line (stanza 8) — though the last two are noun + noun rather than adjective + noun, so they are collocations of a different type.

What makes ‘standing ovation’ such a good example: the two words have almost fused. You can say ‘loud applause’ or ‘long applause’, but ‘standing’ has attached itself so firmly to ‘ovation’ that a native speaker hearing the first word expects the second. That is the test of a collocation — predictability, not correctness.
Tip: collocations are learnt, not worked out. English says heavy rain and strong coffee, never strong rain or heavy coffee, and there is no rule behind it. When you meet a new noun, note the adjectives it keeps company with.
Q2.
II. Complete the table given below by writing four nouns in Column 2 that collocate with the adjectives in Column 1. One example has been done for you. You may take the help of a dictionary. Column 1 / Column 2 1. big — disappointment, failure, surprise, decision 2. heavy 3. strong 4. large 5. great
Answer
Column 1Column 2 — four nouns that collocateA sentence to fix it
1. big (given)disappointment, failure, surprise, decisionMissing the bus by one minute was a big disappointment.
2. heavyrain, traffic, meal, lossHeavy rain in the afternoon and heavy traffic on the ring road delayed the whole team.
3. strongcoffee, wind, opinion, smellHe has a strong opinion about everything except strong coffee, which he refuses.
4. largecrowd, amount, family, scaleA large crowd gathered for the final, and the meet was run on a surprisingly large scale.
5. greatsuccess, courage, difficulty, pleasureShe showed great courage and finished with great difficulty, but finish she did.
Why ‘big’, ‘large’ and ‘great’ are not interchangeable. All three mean ‘of considerable size’, yet each keeps its own company. Big goes with events and outcomes — big decision, big surprise. Large goes with measurable quantities and numbers of things — large crowd, large amount. Great goes with abstract qualities and degrees — great courage, great pleasure. This is why ‘a great crowd’ and ‘a large courage’ both sound wrong to a native ear even though the grammar is faultless.
Check it yourself: a good dictionary lists collocations under the noun, not the adjective. Look up rain and you will find heavy, light, torrential; look up coffee and you will find strong, weak, black. Collect them by noun and you will remember them.
Q3.
III. Choose the correct adjectives from those given in the box for the underlined words given in the sentences below. Ensure you do not use the same adjective twice. [Box: positive, significant, youngest, noisy, loud] 1. The littlest athlete was moving at a steady pace. _____________________
Answer

Answer: youngest. The sentence becomes: The youngest athlete was moving at a steady pace.

Why ‘littlest’ needs replacing: ‘littlest’ is childish, informal English and is rarely used in writing. More importantly, it is inexact here — ‘little’ refers to size, but the poem’s point about this athlete is his age. The poem calls him “the smallest among them” and then “the young boy”, and the exercise on page 160 refers to “the youngest athlete”. ‘Youngest’ is therefore the word the context demands, and it is the only one in the box that can describe a person’s age.
Q4.
III. 2. The eight athletes had a smiling attitude. _____________________
Answer

Answer: positive. The sentence becomes: The eight athletes had a positive attitude.

Why ‘smiling’ is wrong here: a face can smile; an attitude cannot. ‘Smiling attitude’ is a collocation error — the adjective belongs to the wrong noun. An attitude is described as positive, negative, casual, professional. ‘Positive’ also captures what the eight actually showed: they responded to a setback by finding something worth doing rather than complaining.
Compare: ‘nine beaming faces’ (stanza 8) is correct because beaming and face genuinely collocate. Swap the nouns — ‘a beaming attitude’, ‘a positive face’ — and both sound wrong. That single comparison is the whole lesson of this exercise.
Q5.
III. 3. When the athlete fell, he gave a huge cry of pain. _____________________
Answer

Answer: loud. The sentence becomes: When the athlete fell, he gave a loud cry of pain.

Why ‘huge’ does not work: ‘huge’ measures size or volume in space — a huge building, a huge crowd. A cry is measured in sound, so the right adjective is one of volume: loud, sharp, piercing. English says ‘a loud cry’ and never ‘a huge cry’. The poem itself keeps to the sound register: “He gave out a cry of frustration and anguish.”
Watch the box: both loud and noisy are about sound, and you may use each only once. Fit loud here — it describes a single sound — and keep noisy for sentence 5, where it describes a continuous sound made by many people.
Q6.
III. 4. The spectators saw a terrible difference in the athletes who had only come to compete. _____________________
Answer

Answer: significant. The sentence becomes: The spectators saw a significant difference in the athletes who had only come to compete.

Why ‘terrible’ is exactly the wrong word: it means dreadful or frightening, and the change the spectators witnessed was the opposite — eight competitors turning back to help a rival, an act the crowd rewarded with a standing ovation. ‘Significant’ means important and noticeable, which is precisely what the change was: athletes who “had only come to compete” were suddenly doing something else entirely.
Tip: ‘difference’ takes adjectives of degree and importance — significant, slight, marked, considerable, subtle. Adjectives of feeling like terrible or lovely do not collocate with it naturally.
Q7.
III. 5. The gaudy crowd cheered the runners enthusiastically. _____________________
Answer

Answer: noisy. The sentence becomes: The noisy crowd cheered the runners enthusiastically.

Why ‘gaudy’ is wrong: gaudy means brightly coloured in a showy, tasteless way — it describes clothes, decorations or paint, not the behaviour of a crowd. The rest of the sentence is about sound (‘cheered… enthusiastically’), so the adjective must match: a crowd that cheers is a noisy crowd.
The five answers together, with no adjective repeated: 1. youngest   2. positive   3. loud   4. significant   5. noisy. Since loud and noisy are the only two sound words, check them against each other before you write: a single burst of sound is loud; a continuous sound from many sources is noisy.
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