NCERT Solutions for Class 5th English Chapter 8 B. The suffix ‘-less’ — Let us Write
Book page 100 Updated on2026-09-19
Q1.
Read the following sentence. Water is priceless. It means that water is valuable. It is so valuable that you cannot put a price on it. The ‘less’ at the end of the word is a suffix. Complete the following by adding the suffix ‘less’ to the given words.
Answer
A suffix is a small piece added at the end of a word to make a new word. The suffix -less means without.
price + less = priceless (price + without = so precious that no price can be put on it)
Here is the whole exercise, completed:
Word
+ suffix
= New word
What it means
Use
+ less
useless
of no use at all
Care
+ less
careless
without care; not paying attention
Hope
+ less
hopeless
without hope; with no chance left
Fear
+ less
fearless
without fear; brave
Colour
+ less
colourless
without any colour
Spelling tip: nothing is dropped and nothing is changed. Just write the word, then write less after it. Care + less = careless — with one e and a double s at the end, never a single one.
Q2.
Use + less = ..............................
Answer
useless
It means of no use — you cannot do anything with it. Think of the well in our story. Without water, that well was useless to the farmer.
Sentence of your own: A pen without ink is useless.
Q3.
Care + less = ..............................
Answer
careless
It means without care — doing something in a hurry, without paying attention.
Sentence of your own: I lost two marks because of a careless mistake in my sums.
Its opposite: add -ful instead of -less, and you get careful — full of care. Many words work as a pair like this: hopeful / hopeless, useful / useless, fearful / fearless.
Q4.
Hope + less = ..............................
Answer
hopeless
It means without hope — when there seems to be no chance left at all.
Sentence of your own: When the rain did not come for two months, the farmers felt hopeless.
Q5.
Fear + less = ..............................
Answer
fearless
It means without fear — brave. It is a word of praise.
Sentence of your own: Rani of Jhansi was a fearless queen.
Q6.
Colour + less = ..............................
Answer
colourless
It means without any colour. Clean water is colourless — you can see straight through it.
Sentence of your own: Pure water is colourless, but this pond water looks brown.
Spelling: keep the u — colour → colourless. That is the spelling used in Indian and British English, and it is the one your book uses.
Q7.
Make sentences using the new words in your notebook.
Answer
How to do it: write five sentences, one for each new word. In each sentence, show what the word means by what is happening — do not just say “This is useless.”
Sample answer — five sentences:
My old torch is useless now, because its bulb has fused.
It was careless of me to leave my water bottle in the school bus.
The team did not feel hopeless even after losing two matches.
The fearless boy jumped into the pond to save the puppy.
Petrol has a strong smell, but it is almost colourless.
Why suffixes are worth learning: one small ending gives you a whole family of new words. Once you know -less means “without”, you can guess homeless, endless, sleepless, restless and harmless without being told.