SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 17 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 1 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 following idiom. To bring to light

(a)To disengage
(b)To engage in conversation
(c)To disclose
(d)To lighten

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Bring to light is a fixed idiom, and its subject is knowledge, not illumination.

Something hidden is 'in the dark'. Bringing it to light makes it public — an audit brings a fraud to light, a witness brings new evidence to light.

That is precisely what disclose means: to reveal what was concealed. Option (c) is the one gloss in the set that carries revealing at all.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
To disengage — Disengage means to detach or to withdraw from something. Nothing in 'bring to light' involves separating two things, and the idiom carries no sense of pulling away.
(b)
To engage in conversation — This borrows the sense of bring up, which does mean to raise a topic in talk. 'Bring to light' is about revealing a fact, not about starting a conversation over it.
(d)
To lighten — The literal trap: it reads light as brightness or as weight. 'Lighten' means to brighten or to make less heavy, and an idiom is not decoded word by word.

Concept

An idiom's meaning is fixed by usage, not by adding up its words. Bring to light belongs to a family of English expressions that treat knowledge as visibility: facts 'come to light', a matter is 'brought out into the open', a secret 'sees the light of day'.

Two forms of this one exist. Bring to light is transitive — somebody brings something to light. Come to light is intransitive — the fact comes to light on its own, with no agent named.

The stem prints the idiom on its own, with no sentence around it. There is no context to lean on, so the gloss has to come from the idiom itself and from the option set.

Key facts

To bring to light means to reveal or disclose something previously hidden or unknown.
The intransitive twin is 'come to light', used when no agent is named, as in the truth came to light.
To lighten means to make brighter or to make less heavy, and is unrelated to the idiom.

Study next

Idioms built on light and dark, such as 'see the light of day' and 'keep someone in the dark'Phrasal verbs formed on bring: bring up, bring about, bring out, bring roundTelling a literal reading of an idiom from its established figurative meaning

Common traps

Decoding 'light' literally and choosing 'to lighten'.
Confusing 'bring to light' with 'bring up', which means to raise a subject in conversation.

SSC gives the idiom bare, with no sentence around it, so the option set does the work — here one option reads 'light' literally while the rest come from unrelated senses.

Idiom meaning is also asked at English Q.17 in this sitting ('pulled a long face'), and also asked 13 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.20 ('turned a deaf ear to') and 11 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.10 ('to read between the lines').

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.