SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 1 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 given group of words. On cloud nine

(a)Being very delighted
(b)Flying in the sky
(c)Being angry with someone
(d)Being very high

Answer

Why

Correct — A. On cloud nine is an idiom, so it is answered from its settled sense, not from the words cloud and nine.

That settled sense is extremely happy — elated, floating after good news.

Option (a), being very delighted, is a plain restatement of it. The other three glosses either read the words literally or name a feeling the phrase never carries.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Flying in the sky — This is the literal reading of the word cloud, and an idiom is not the sum of its words. The phrase reports a state of mind, never a position in the air.
(c)
Being angry with someone — Anger is the opposite pole of feeling. On cloud nine is used of joy after good news, so a gloss about being angry cannot fit it.
(d)
Being very high — Very high describes altitude or intoxication. The option supplies no word for happiness, and happiness is the whole of the idiom's meaning.

Concept

An idiom is a fixed phrase whose meaning cannot be worked out from its parts. On cloud nine means extremely happy or elated.

The option list here sets the literal reading beside the figurative one. That is why Flying in the sky is offered: it is what the words say, not what the phrase means.

The safe habit is to fix the emotion or action the phrase reports before you read the options, then pick the option that states it plainly.

Over the moon and in seventh heaven carry the same sense of extreme delight, so the three are worth learning together rather than one at a time.

Key facts

On cloud nine means extremely happy or elated.
Over the moon and in seventh heaven are near-synonyms of on cloud nine.
An idiom question is answered by the phrase's fixed meaning, not by adding up its words.

Study next

Idioms of emotion: over the moon, down in the dumps, on top of the worldIdioms built on sky and weather words, where the literal reading is the planted trapThe reverse task, substituting an idiom for an underlined phrase, as at 11 Sep 2024, 09:00, EC Q.10

Common traps

Choosing the literal picture, Flying in the sky, because the word cloud is in the phrase.
Reading high in Being very high as happy, when the option gives no word for happiness.

One idiom, four glosses is a standing English format. Break a leg is asked this way at 9 Sep 2024, 12:30, EC Q.4, and On the ball at 10 Sep 2024, 09:00, EC Q.13.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.