SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 10 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Select the most appropriate meaning of the given idiom. Care a hang

(a)Caring too much
(b)Hanging clothes to dry
(c)Showing no interest
(d)Putting an outfit on a hanger

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Hang here is not the verb. It is a minimising noun standing for the smallest imaginable amount, exactly as damn does in not care a damn and hoot does in not care two hoots.

The expression measures how much concern someone has, and the answer this family of idioms gives is none at all — plain indifference.

Showing no interest is that meaning, so option (c) is the reading the key takes.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Caring too much — The opposite sense. A minimiser like hang exists to say the amount of concern is nil, so the idiom can never come out as caring too much.
(b)
Hanging clothes to dry — A literal reading of hang as the verb. Idiom items are built to punish exactly that reading, and this expression has nothing to do with laundry.
(d)
Putting an outfit on a hanger — Literal again, this time through hanger. The noun in the idiom is hang, and it names an amount of concern, not an object in a wardrobe.

Concept

English has a family of idioms that measure concern in a deliberately worthless unit: not care a damn, not care a fig, not care two hoots, not care a straw.

The noun is chosen for its smallness, and the point of the phrase is that even that much concern is absent.

Hang belongs to that family. Once you see the pattern you do not need to have met this particular idiom before, because every member of the family means the same thing: total indifference.

Note the form SSC prints. In natural use the expression carries a negative — 'I do not care a hang what they think' — and it is the negative that delivers the indifference.

The paper prints the idiom bare, the way idiom lists do, and keys it with the meaning the family has in use. The options leave no doubt which reading is intended, since three of them are about literally hanging things.

Key facts

In this idiom hang is a noun meaning the least possible amount, like damn in not care a damn.
The expression normally appears with a negative, as in 'I do not care a hang'.
Related minimisers include not care a fig, not care two hoots and not give a straw.

Study next

Minimiser idioms: not care a fig, not give a damn, not care two hootsCommon verbs used as nouns inside fixed phrases: a hang, a say, a goMeaning-of-idiom items compared with substitute-the-phrase items

Common traps

Reading hang as the verb and choosing one of the two laundry options.
Assuming an idiom that means indifference must contain a negative word.
Picking 'caring too much' because the stem prints the idiom without its usual 'not'.

SSC asks idioms in two framings: a bare phrase with four candidate meanings, and a plain phrase inside a sentence that an idiom must replace.

The second framing appears in this same shift — also 10 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.14, where 'tell others secret information' is replaced by spill the beans.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.