Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (EO/AO) 2017 recruitment test. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, GRS-A-TNS); answer as per the official UPSC final answer key. This question is in Part A. Answer last reviewed 24 August 2026.

Which one of the following can be used as a substitute for the words written in capital letters in the sentence, “There is no meaning to CRY OVER THE SPILT MILK since the matter is over”?

(a)No use of worrying about
(b)No use of spilling now
(c)No use of celebration
(d)No use of asking for

Answer

Why

Correct — A, (a) No use of worrying about.

The words in capitals are a proverb, and a proverb means what it has come to mean, not what its words add up to. ‘It is no use crying over spilt milk’ says that there is no point in grieving over what has already happened and cannot now be undone. The milk is the vehicle of the picture: once it is on the floor no amount of distress will put it back in the vessel, so the sensible course is to stop lamenting and get on. The saying is old in English and seventeenth-century collections of proverbs record it in the form ‘no weeping for shed milk’. The past participle is printed here in the British form ‘spilt’; American usage writes ‘spilled’.

The substitution therefore has to carry two things: the uselessness, and the distress that is useless. Option (a) carries both — ‘no use’ for the first and ‘worrying about’ for the second — and no other option carries either completely.

The sentence supplies the confirming clue in its own second clause. ‘Since the matter is over’ states the condition the proverb assumes: the thing is finished, beyond recall. A phrase substituted for the capitalised words must be about a pointless reaction to something already done, and that is what worrying about a closed matter is.

One practical note on this pair of items. The four options are printed as sense-equivalents of the capitalised words rather than as phrases that would drop into the sentence and leave it perfectly smooth. Read them as answers to the question ‘what do these words mean here?’, which is what the stem asks, rather than as a grammar exercise in slotting.

Why the others are wrong

(b)No use of spilling now — ‘No use of spilling now’ reads the proverb literally, and the literal reading is the standard trap in every idiom item. Milk and spilling belong to the picture the saying uses; they are not what it is about. Taken at face value the option would advise against spilling anything further, which is ordinary practical caution and has nothing to do with the point of the proverb, that lamentation over an accomplished fact is wasted. Notice too that it contradicts the sentence it is supposed to fit: ‘since the matter is over’ says the spilling has already happened, so advice about spilling now answers a question nobody is asking.
(c)No use of celebration — ‘No use of celebration’ reverses the emotion. The proverb is about grief — crying, weeping, lamenting — and it counsels against a useless reaction of sorrow, not against a useless reaction of joy. There is a separate English idea about premature or misplaced rejoicing, expressed in sayings such as counting one’s chickens before they are hatched, but it is a different idea and is not what these capitalised words say. This option catches a candidate who has grasped that the phrase is about a pointless response but has not registered which response.
(d)No use of asking for — ‘No use of asking for’ turns the phrase into a matter of requests, which no part of the proverb supports. Nobody in the saying asks anybody for anything; a thing has been lost and someone is grieving over the loss. The option shares only the words ‘no use’ with the answer, and a candidate choosing on that resemblance is matching the first two words of an option to the general shape of the proverb without testing the rest. On an idiom item the whole of the option has to fit the whole of the meaning.

Concept

An idiom or a proverb is non-compositional: its meaning cannot be worked out from the meanings of its words, because the words have been pressed into a picture and it is the picture as a whole that carries the sense. That is why idiom items are answered by recognition rather than by analysis, and why the literal reading is always among the options.

The English stock of proverbs about accomplished facts and futile regret is worth collecting, since one of them appears in most papers: it is no use crying over spilt milk; what is done cannot be undone; let bygones be bygones; there is no point in shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Each says something slightly different — the last is about a precaution taken too late rather than about grief — and an examiner who wants a hard item will exploit exactly that difference.

The method for a substitution item has three steps. First, identify the picture and state the meaning in plain words to yourself, before reading the options. Second, check the meaning against the rest of the sentence, which almost always contains a clause confirming it. Third, test each option against the whole of that meaning rather than against its first few words. Options in these sets are commonly built by keeping part of the right answer and changing the operative word, which is the shape of two of the three misses here.

Q19 and Q20 close Part A, and they are its only idiom items. The stem asks for a substitute ‘for the words written in capital letters’, and on this booklet capitals are what mark the tested material throughout the section — nothing is underlined anywhere in Part A.

The two items are of a piece with the rest of the section in what they test. A synonym item asks which word means what this word means; a phrasal-verb item asks which combination the language uses for this meaning; an idiom item asks what a fixed form has come to mean. All three are questions about usage rather than about rules, and all three are prepared for in the same way: by reading English attentively rather than by memorising grammar.

One feature of the printed item is worth recording. The paper prints the proverb as ‘CRY OVER THE SPILT MILK’, with a definite article; the settled English form has no article — to cry over spilt milk. The addition does not change the sense, and the item is unaffected, but a candidate who knows the idiom in its usual form should not be thrown by the extra word. Similarly, the options are worded as glosses of the capitalised phrase rather than as drop-in replacements that leave the sentence idiomatic; the question asks what the words mean, and the meaning is what the options offer.

Key facts

‘It is no use crying over spilt milk’ means that grieving over what has already happened and cannot be undone is pointless.
The saying is old in English and appears in seventeenth-century proverb collections in the form ‘no weeping for shed milk’.
‘Spilt’ is the British form of the past participle used in the proverb; American usage writes ‘spilled’.
The clause ‘since the matter is over’ in the printed sentence states the condition the proverb assumes — that the thing is finished and beyond recall.
An idiom is non-compositional: its meaning cannot be assembled from its words, which is why the literal reading appears among the options in every item of this kind.
The paper prints the proverb with a definite article, as ‘the spilt milk’, where the settled English form has none.

A proverb means what it has come to mean, and the literal reading is always on the page

The proverb→‘It is no use crying over spilt milk’ — there is no point in grieving over what has already happened and cannot now be undone. Once the milk is on the floor, no amount of distress will put it back in the vessel.

What a substitute must carry→Two things: the uselessness, and the distress that is useless. ‘No use of worrying about’ carries both — ‘no use’ for the first and ‘worrying about’ for the second — and no other option carries either completely.

(b) No use of spilling now→The literal reading, which is the standard trap in every idiom item. It also contradicts the sentence it is meant to fit: ‘since the matter is over’ says the spilling has already happened, so advice about spilling now answers a question nobody is asking.

(c) No use of celebration→Reverses the emotion. The proverb counsels against a useless reaction of sorrow, not one of joy; the separate English idea about premature rejoicing is counting one’s chickens before they are hatched.

(d) No use of asking for→Turns the phrase into a matter of requests, which no part of the proverb supports — a thing has been lost and someone is grieving over the loss. It shares only the words ‘no use’ with the answer.

The sentence confirms the sense→‘Since the matter is over’ states the condition the proverb assumes: the thing is finished and beyond recall. The saying is old, appearing in seventeenth-century collections as ‘no weeping for shed milk’.

Study next

Proverbs about accomplished facts and futile regret, and the differences between them: crying over spilt milk, what is done cannot be undone, let bygones be bygones, shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.Idioms drawn from household and farm life — spilt milk, chickens counted before hatching, the last straw, making hay while the sun shines — and the pictures behind them.British and American forms of the same past participles: spilt and spilled, learnt and learned, burnt and burned, dreamt and dreamed.How idiom options are built: the literal reading, the reversed emotion, and the near-miss that keeps part of the right wording.Reading the clause that follows an idiom in a test sentence, which usually states the idiom’s meaning in plain words.

Common traps

Taking the literal reading. Milk and spilling belong to the picture, not to the meaning, and the literal option is present in every idiom item.
Recognising that the phrase is about a useless reaction but not registering which reaction; the proverb is about grief, not about rejoicing.
Choosing on the first words of an option. Three of these four begin with ‘No use of’, so the deciding word is the one at the end.
Expecting the option to slot into the sentence and leave it perfectly idiomatic; the stem asks what the capitalised words mean.

The idiom items on these papers are placed at the end of Part A and are printed with the tested words in capitals. The proverbs and phrases used are the common stock rather than anything obscure — spilt milk, yeoman’s service, hand to mouth — and the four options are constructed on a fixed pattern: one accurate gloss, one literal reading of the picture, one that reverses the sense, and one that shares wording with the answer while changing the operative word. Reading to the end of every option is therefore worth more here than in any other set in the section.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q20Open & attempt →

Which one of the following can be used as a substitute for the words written in capital letters in the sentence, “Serving the sufferers is true YEOMAN’S SERVICE”?

(a) A risky job
(b) An amusing job
(c) An excellent work
(d) An unwanted job

Answer(c) An excellent work

The other idiom item of this pair and the last question of Part A, decided the same way — by what the fixed phrase has come to mean.

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q18Open & attempt →

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”?

(a) in
(b) to
(c) for
(d) inside

Answer(b) to

The preposition item immediately before this pair, which also turns on recognising a fixed phrase whole rather than assembling it.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following can be used as a substitute for the words written in capital letters in the sentence, “The manager asked him not to BEAT ABOUT THE BUSH and to come to the point”?
- (a)Avoid the main issue
- (b)Strike the plants
- (c)Waste money
- (d)Speak loudly
Answer(a) Avoid the main issue — to beat about the bush is to approach a matter indirectly instead of addressing it. ‘Strike the plants’ is the literal reading of the picture, and neither wasting money nor speaking loudly has anything to do with the phrase.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following can be used as a substitute for the words written in capital letters in the sentence, “The new assistant was asked to LEARN THE ROPES before taking charge of the section”?
- (a)Buy the equipment
- (b)Learn the basic procedures
- (c)Tie the files together
- (d)Wait for further orders
Answer(b) Learn the basic procedures — the phrase comes from sailing, where a new hand had to learn which rope did what, and it means to learn how a job is done. The other three read the ropes literally or invent a sense the idiom does not carry.

Why