A computer-implemented method, apparatus and computer program product of question generation in a cognitive system, comprising: receiving a training question; applying rules of grammar and common usage to generate variants of the training question; identifying any generalized versions of specific words, such as verbs or nouns in the training question; identifying any questions related to the training question; filtering out, utilizing a classifier, generated variants which do not make sense; and providing one or more output questions, synonymous to the training question.