SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 5 of 99

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 underlined idiom in the following sentence. In my new office, all employees were different, so I felt like a fish out of water.

(a)Disappointed
(b)Frustrated
(c)Homeless
(d)Uncomfortable

Answer

Why

Correct — D. A fish out of water describes a person who feels awkward and out of place in surroundings they are not used to.

The sentence hands you the trigger: the office is new and 'all employees were different'. That is unfamiliarity, not loss and not obstruction.

Being out of your element makes you ill at ease, and of the four single-word readings offered it is option (d), Uncomfortable, that names that feeling.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Disappointed — Disappointed needs an expectation that went unmet. The sentence sets up no expectation at all, only an unfamiliar workplace.
(b)
Frustrated — Frustrated means blocked or exasperated by something that will not go your way. Nothing obstructs the speaker here, who is simply out of place.
(c)
Homeless — Homeless takes the fish's water for a home and reads the idiom literally. An idiom is not decoded word by word, and the speaker's problem is a new office, not a lost house.

Concept

An idiom is a fixed expression whose meaning cannot be assembled from its parts, so the mark goes to whoever recognises the whole phrase and then checks it against the sentence.

A fish out of water carries a single idea: out of one's natural element, and so awkward, self-conscious and ill at ease.

When the options are single words rather than paraphrases, sort them by feeling. Awkwardness, disappointment and frustration are three different feelings, and being out of place produces just one of them.

The idiom reports the state of the person, not a fault in the place. A new office full of unfamiliar colleagues is exactly the situation it was made for.

Key facts

A fish out of water means feeling awkward and out of place in unfamiliar surroundings.
The clue inside the sentence is 'new office' together with 'all employees were different', both markers of unfamiliarity.
Idiom meaning is fixed by usage, so it cannot be worked out from the literal words fish and water.

Study next

Idioms of not belonging, such as out of one's depth and all at seaIdioms whose surface picture invites a literal misreading, such as break a leg and bite the bulletSingle-word paraphrase options, where the shade of feeling decides the answer

Common traps

Reading the fish's water as its home and choosing Homeless
Settling for Frustrated because discomfort and frustration feel adjacent, when nothing in the sentence blocks the speaker

Idiom items come in several shapes and it pays to recognise each. Underlined inside a sentence, as here and at 13 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.18 (once in a blue moon).

Given bare and defined, as at 10 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.20 (bite the bullet). Given as a blank to fill with the right idiom, as at English Q.12 of this paper (beside the mark). Given as a meaning for which you supply the idiom, as at 9 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.3 (five-finger discount).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.