NDA (II) 2022 GAT Q41: A queer

Q: What is the answer to NDA (II) 2022 GAT Q41?

A. Correct — A, a strange person. 'A queer fish' is an informal, chiefly British way of describing someone who strikes other people as odd or eccentric. 'Queer' here carries its older dictionary sense of 'strange', and 'fish' is one of several long-standing informal words for a person.

NDA (II) 2022 General Ability Test · Question 41 of 150

Question text verified against the official NDA question paper.

A queer fish

(a)A strange person
(b)A good person
(c)An unlucky person
(d)A lucky person

Answer

Why

Correct — A, a strange person. 'A queer fish' is an informal, chiefly British way of describing someone who strikes other people as odd or eccentric. 'Queer' here carries its older dictionary sense of 'strange', and 'fish' is one of several long-standing informal words for a person.

Why the others are wrong

(b)A good person — The phrase comments on how odd someone seems, not on their character; it makes no claim about goodness.
(c)An unlucky person — Nothing in the phrase touches on luck — a queer fish may be doing perfectly well.
(d)A lucky person — Another guess about fortune; the idiom is only about eccentricity.

Concept

'A queer fish' means an eccentric or peculiar person — a dated but still recognised British expression.

English has a small family of 'fish' expressions applied to people: 'an odd fish' for an eccentric, 'a cold fish' for someone who shows no emotion, 'a big fish' for an important person. Recognising that 'fish' can stand for a person is the whole key to this item.

Key facts

'A cold fish' describes someone who shows little emotion.
'A big fish in a small pond' describes an important person within a limited setting.
'Queer' in this phrase keeps its older meaning of strange or odd.

Study next

idioms built on fish and other animalsadjectives of character — eccentric, aloof, affable, reticentBritish expressions that still appear in objective papersreading an idiom as a whole rather than word by word

Common traps

Guessing a good/bad or lucky/unlucky meaning when the idiom is about oddness.
Taking 'fish' literally instead of as a word for a person.

Asked as an idioms-and-phrases item — choose the option that gives the meaning of the phrase.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
'A cold fish' means:
- (a)a dishonest person
- (b)a person who shows little emotion
- (c)a person who eats very little
- (d)a very shy child
Answer(b) a person who shows little emotion — the phrase describes an unfeeling or distant manner.
practice — not a real PYQ
'A big fish in a small pond' means:
- (a)an important person in a limited setting
- (b)a wealthy landowner
- (c)a fish farmer
- (d)a person who talks too much
Answer(a) an important person in a limited setting — the pond stands for the small world in which the person matters.