SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 13 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 18 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 10 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. My uncle lives in New York, so I only see him once in a blue moon.

(a)Monthly
(b)Weekly
(c)Very often
(d)Not very often

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Once in a blue moon means very rarely, hardly ever.

The sentence supplies its own proof. The trigger is only see him: "only" in front of a frequency shrinks it, and the reason given — the uncle lives in New York — explains why the visits are scarce.

So the idiom has to grade the frequency downwards, which is what "not very often" does. Option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Monthly — Monthly is the trap the word moon sets — month and moon share a root, so a blue moon reads like a scheduled monthly event. The idiom names no interval at all, only a degree of rarity.
(b)
Weekly — Weekly makes the visits routine. The sentence gives a reason the visits are hard to arrange, so the meaning has to run the other way, towards seldom.
(c)
Very often — Very often is the exact reverse of the idiom, and it also fights the word only, which marks the number of visits as small rather than large.

Concept

An idiom means what usage has settled on, not what its words add up to. Once in a blue moon is fixed as "very rarely".

The image behind it is astronomical. A blue moon is the popular name for a second full moon falling inside one calendar month, which happens every two or three years — rare, but not never.

That is why the idiom means seldom rather than impossible, and why SSC offers you four paraphrases and asks which one an ordinary speaker would accept in the sentence.

Two options are intervals (Monthly, Weekly) and two are judgements about frequency (Very often, Not very often).

Sorting the list into those two families first halves the field, because an idiom that grades frequency will not be answered by a calendar unit.

Key facts

Once in a blue moon means very rarely, and it fixes no interval of time.
A blue moon is the popular name for a second full moon inside a single calendar month, recurring every two or three years.
The moon is not blue in the phrase — the expression is about rarity, not colour.
Only in front of a frequency phrase makes the frequency smaller, never larger.

Study next

Frequency idioms: once in a blue moon, off and on, every now and thenIdioms built on natural imagery, such as out of the blue and under the weatherReading only, hardly and scarcely as frequency-shrinking words

Common traps

Reading moon as month and answering Monthly.
Expecting an idiom about frequency to name a period of time.
Choosing Very often because the sentence sounds warm about the uncle.

SSC frames idioms as a choice between four paraphrases rather than a definition to recall, so the work is elimination, not memory.

The same framing runs at 9 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.13 (at her wits' end) and at 23 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.20 (off and on, keyed Periodically). The 13 Sep 2024, 12:30 paper asks it again at English Q.9 (a straight shooter).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.