The football match has to be _____ because of the weather.
- (a)called off
- (b)continued
- (c)put off
- (d)turned off
Correct — A, called off. To call something off is to cancel it, and a fixture that 'has to be' abandoned on account of the weather is the standard use of the phrase. Heavy rain or a waterlogged pitch, and the match is called off.
- (b)continued — This reverses the sense, since weather that forces a decision about a match stops play rather than prolongs it.
- (c)put off — 'Put off' means deferred to a later date, so it assumes a rearranged fixture that the sentence never mentions, whereas 'called off' is the phrase for a match that simply does not take place.
- (d)turned off — 'Turn off' is used of appliances, lights, taps and roads, or of losing interest in something, and never of cancelling an event.
A phrasal-verb item separating the cancelling of an event from its postponement.
Option (c) is the deliberate near-miss and is worth understanding rather than dismissing. 'Put off' does mean to defer, and a rained-off match is often rescheduled, so a candidate can talk themselves into it. The key takes 'called off' because the sentence names no new date and because that is the fixed phrase for a fixture abandoned on account of weather. The difference between the two is the aftermath — a match that is put off will be played later, while a match that is called off will not.
- 'Call off' works equally for a search, a strike, a deal or a wedding.
- 'Put off' carries a second and unrelated sense, that of making someone lose interest, as in 'the smell put me off'.
- Reading 'put off' and 'called off' as the same thing because both stop the event happening now.
Asked as a fill-in-the-blank item in which two phrasal verbs are close in sense and the context decides between them.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the phrase that fits — The search for the missing climbers was _____ after three days of blizzards.
- (a)turned off
- (b)put off
- (c)called off
- (d)taken off
Answer(c) called off — the search was abandoned, not rescheduled.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the phrase that fits — The meeting has been _____ till Monday because the chairman is unwell.
- (a)called off
- (b)put off
- (c)turned off
- (d)run off
Answer(b) put off — a new date is named, so this is a postponement.