<u>Walk a tightrope</u>
- (a)to be forced to leave your job
- (b)to be ready to fall
- (c)to act very carefully
- (d)to invite danger
Correct — C, to act very carefully. To walk a tightrope is to be in a position where two opposing dangers or demands press from either side and any slip is costly, so the person must move with great care and constant balance. A government walks a tightrope between raising revenue and keeping prices down.
- (a)to be forced to leave your job — That sense belongs to a different rope idiom, 'to walk the plank'. Nothing is about dismissal.
- (b)to be ready to fall — This mistakes the picture for its worst outcome. The whole skill of the tightrope walker, and the whole point of the idiom, is not falling.
- (d)to invite danger — This reverses the attitude. Someone walking a tightrope is managing a danger they are already in, whereas courting danger deliberately is closer to 'to play with fire'.
An idiom item on 'walk a tightrope', meaning to proceed with great care between two competing risks.
Three of the four options are drawn from the same mental picture of a high wire, which is what makes the item hard, since falling and danger and precariousness are all in that picture. The meaning turns on which part of the picture the phrase actually fixes on, and it is the care and the balance of the walker rather than the drop below.
- The phrase is often extended with 'between', as in 'walking a tightrope between the two allies'.
- A near equivalent is 'to tread a fine line', which carries the same idea of a narrow safe path between two errors.
- Picking the option that names a feature of the image rather than the behaviour the idiom describes.
Asked as an idiom item in which several options are drawn from the same picture and only one names the behaviour.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the meaning of the phrase — <u>walk on eggshells</u>
- (a)to move very quietly
- (b)to behave very cautiously to avoid upsetting someone
- (c)to waste time
- (d)to take a big risk
Answer(b) to behave very cautiously to avoid upsetting someone.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Choose the meaning of the phrase — <u>play with fire</u>
- (a)to work as a firefighter
- (b)to take a foolish risk
- (c)to be very skilful
- (d)to lose one's temper
Answer(b) to take a foolish risk.