SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 5 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 option to fill in the blank. After years of fights with his neighbour Ram, Shekhar decided to hold out the _______ and invited Ram for tea.

(a)poker face
(b)comparing apples to oranges
(c)chip on shoulder
(d)olive branch

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The idiom is hold out the olive branch — to make an offer of peace after a quarrel.

The sentence supplies both halves of that meaning: years of fights before the blank, an invitation to tea after it. Only a peace-making gesture joins the two.

The olive branch has stood for peace since classical antiquity, and English keeps it in the verbs hold out, extend and offer. Option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
poker face — A poker face is an expression that gives nothing away. You keep a poker face rather than hold one out, and hiding your feelings does nothing to end a quarrel.
(b)
comparing apples to oranges — Comparing apples to oranges means setting two unlike things side by side. It is a whole clause rather than a noun phrase, so it cannot follow hold out the.
(c)
chip on shoulder — A chip on the shoulder is a nursed grudge — the state Shekhar is leaving behind, not the gesture he makes. Idiomatically a chip is carried, never held out.

Concept

Idiom-completion items give a sentence engineered to point at one meaning, then offer four idioms of which three are about something else.

Read the frame first. Here it is years of fights on one side and an invitation on the other, so the blank must be a gesture of reconciliation.

Then check the grammar of the slot. Hold out the ______ needs a noun phrase, which rules out an idiom that is a whole clause however apt its meaning might be.

The idiom works in two shapes, extend an olive branch and hold out the olive branch, and the paper has printed the definite-article version.

Key facts

To hold out or extend an olive branch is to offer peace or reconciliation.
The olive branch has been a symbol of peace since classical antiquity.
To have a chip on your shoulder is to carry a grudge or a sense of grievance.
To keep a poker face is to show no expression that reveals what you feel.

Study next

Peace and quarrel idioms: bury the hatchet, mend fences, build bridgesIdioms whose meaning is asked directly rather than filled into a blank, as at English Q.8 of this paperMatching the grammar of an idiom to the slot it has to fill

Common traps

Choosing chip on shoulder because the sentence mentions a long quarrel, when the blank needs the remedy and not the grievance
Ignoring the shape of the slot, which needs a noun phrase after hold out the

An idiom is either completed, as here, or defined. English Q.8 of this paper does the second, giving the proverb about lemons and asking what it means.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.