SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 3 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 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 idiom. Start from scratch

(a)To start or create something from the very beginning
(b)To point out something wrong
(c)To address an issue
(d)To develop something out of waste material

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Scratch in this idiom is the sporting sense: the line scratched into the ground that a runner given no head start had to begin from.

So "start from scratch" means to begin at the very beginning, with nothing prepared in advance — which is what option (a) says.

The idiom fixes a starting point. It says nothing about materials and nothing about finding fault, which is where the remaining wordings go.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
To point out something wrong — That is fault-finding, closer to "pick holes in". The scratch in this idiom is a starting line, not a criticism.
(c)
To address an issue — Too general. Addressing an issue carries no sense of beginning with nothing, and that "from nothing" element is the whole content of the idiom.
(d)
To develop something out of waste material — This reads scratch as scrap. The idiom means starting with nothing prepared, not starting with salvaged or waste material.

Concept

An idiom is fixed: its meaning does not follow from its parts, so "scratch" cannot be reasoned out on its own.

This one belongs to a small family built on the starting line — "from scratch", "up to scratch" (meeting the required standard) and a "scratch team" (one thrown together with nothing to build on).

In all three, scratch is the mark on the ground, the baseline. Learn the image once and three expressions come with it.

SSC keys idioms to the standard dictionary sense, so a plausible literal reading is worth expecting among the wrong options — here it is option (d), which reads scratch as scrap.

Options (b), (c) and (d) are each a partial truth about starting or repairing something, which is how SSC builds idiom distractors. None is absurd, and each drops the "from nothing" element that the idiom actually carries.

Key facts

Start from scratch means to begin from the very beginning, with nothing prepared beforehand.
Scratch in this family of idioms is the line scratched on the ground marking a race's starting point.
Up to scratch, from the same image, means meeting the required standard.

Study next

Idioms built on the same image: up to scratch, a scratch teamIdioms of beginning again: back to square one, from the ground upSeparating an idiom's fixed meaning from its literal reading

Common traps

Reading scratch as scrap and choosing the recycling option.
Choosing the vaguest option because it is the hardest one to call wrong.

SSC dresses idioms several ways. Here you are given the idiom and asked for its meaning; at 19 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.10 the idiom is underlined inside a sentence instead.

At 19 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.17 an idiom has to substitute an underlined segment, and at English Q.16 in this same 09:00 shift an idiomatic segment is matched to a paraphrase.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.