Which one of the following prepositions may be used in the blank space in the sentence, “He lived a hand ____ mouth existence, surviving on just a few rupees a week”?

Correct — B, (b) to.

The blank belongs to a fixed English phrase: from hand to mouth, and in the attributive form used here, a hand-to-mouth existence. It describes living on whatever is earned as it is earned, with nothing put by for later. The picture inside the phrase is literal — whatever the hand gets goes straight to the mouth, and nothing is stored on the way — and the preposition that carries it is ‘to’, which marks the destination of a movement from one point to another.

The sentence glosses itself, and a candidate should use that. ‘Surviving on just a few rupees a week’ states the meaning of the idiom in plain words, so the phrase in the blank must describe subsistence without a margin. That rules out any reading in which the two nouns are joined in partnership or in exchange rather than in movement.

The grammar of the phrase is worth a note as well. ‘Hand to mouth’ is doing the work of an adjective in front of ‘existence’, and English builds a whole class of such phrases from two nouns joined by ‘to’: door to door, day to day, face to face, year to year, hand to hand in the case of fighting. In careful printing they are hyphenated when they stand before a noun — a door-to-door survey, a day-to-day account, a hand-to-mouth existence — and this booklet prints the phrase without any hyphens. Nothing in the answer turns on that.

The item is also the only preposition question in Part A, and it carries no bracketed gloss, unlike the four phrasal-verb items immediately before it.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)in — ‘In’ is the strongest of the three misses, because ‘hand in hand’ is a real and common English idiom — it means together or in close association, as when enforcement is said to go hand in hand with awareness, or two people walk hand in hand. That is exactly why it is offered. But it joins two hands, not a hand and a mouth, and it describes partnership rather than movement from one place to another; nothing in it says anything about subsistence. Swapping the preposition of a fixed phrase and producing a different real phrase is one of the standard ways of building an option, and the defence is to read the whole idiom, both nouns included, before choosing.
• (c)for — ‘For’ marks purpose or exchange — a payment for services, a receipt for the amount, an eye for an eye. Between two nouns it says that the one is given in return for the other, which is a relation of barter and not of movement. ‘Hand for mouth’ is not an English phrase in any sense, and the exchange reading would in any case say something quite different from the sentence’s own gloss about surviving on a few rupees a week. The option tests whether a candidate is fitting a preposition by feel rather than recognising a set phrase.
• (d)inside — ‘Inside’ is a preposition of containment and it is also a heavier word than the fixed phrases of this shape ever use. English builds these two-noun adjectival phrases out of the short prepositions — to, by, in, on, for — and ‘inside’ appears in none of them. Read into the sentence it produces nothing at all: a hand inside mouth existence is not English and describes nothing. Its function on the page is to be discarded, and a candidate who hesitates over it has probably not recognised that the blank belongs to an idiom rather than to free composition.

Prepositions in English are only partly governed by rule; a large part of their use is fixed by phrase, and a fixed phrase has to be recognised as a whole. The blank here is not an invitation to choose the preposition that best expresses a relation — it is a hole in a phrase that the language has already settled.

The family this phrase belongs to is worth learning together, because it is productive and it is regularly tested. Two nouns joined by ‘to’ give movement or progression from the first to the second: from hand to mouth, from door to door, from day to day, from time to time, from beginning to end, from top to bottom, from cover to cover. The same pair of nouns joined by ‘in’ gives association: hand in hand, arm in arm. Joined by ‘for’ it gives exchange or correspondence: an eye for an eye, word for word, blow for blow. Joined by ‘by’ it gives sequence or increment: side by side, one by one, step by step, little by little, day by day.

Notice that ‘day to day’ and ‘day by day’ both exist and mean different things — the first is routine and continuing, the second is incremental and progressive — which is the clearest possible demonstration that the preposition, not the nouns, carries the meaning in this construction.

When such a phrase stands before a noun as a modifier it is hyphenated in careful writing, though printing practice varies.

Key facts

• ‘From hand to mouth’, and attributively ‘a hand-to-mouth existence’, describes living on what is earned as it is earned, with nothing saved.
• The preposition ‘to’ carries movement from one point to another, which is the relation between the hand and the mouth in the idiom.
• ‘Hand in hand’ is a different and equally real idiom, meaning together or in close association, and it is offered here to catch a candidate who reads only one of the two nouns.
• Two-noun phrases take their meaning from the preposition: ‘to’ gives progression, ‘in’ gives association, ‘for’ gives exchange, ‘by’ gives sequence or increment.
• ‘Day to day’ and ‘day by day’ both exist and differ — routine and continuing against incremental and progressive.
• The booklet prints the phrase with no hyphens; careful usage hyphenates such a compound when it stands before a noun.

Common traps

• Choosing ‘in’ because ‘hand in hand’ is familiar. The phrase on the page joins a hand to a mouth, not a hand to a hand.
• Fitting a preposition by feel instead of recognising that the blank sits inside a fixed phrase which the language has already settled.
• Ignoring the clause after the comma, which states the meaning of the idiom and identifies it for anyone who has met it.
• Expecting a bracketed gloss because the four previous items had one; this item prints none.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following prepositions may be used in the blank space in the sentence, “The two departments worked hand ____ hand to complete the survey on time”?

  • (a)in
  • (b)to
  • (c)for
  • (d)over

  Answer(a) in — ‘hand in hand’ means together or in close association, which is what two departments working jointly are doing. ‘Hand to hand’ belongs to fighting at close quarters, and neither ‘for’ nor ‘over’ forms a phrase here.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following prepositions may be used in the blank space in the sentence, “The inspector was taken to task ____ his failure to verify the returns”?

  • (a)for
  • (b)on
  • (c)with
  • (d)of

  Answer(a) for — ‘to take somebody to task for something’ is the fixed form, ‘for’ marking the fault reproved. The phrase does not take ‘on’, ‘with’ or ‘of’ in any register.