Select the most appropriate meaning of the underlined idiom/phrase. I had heard of henpecked husbands and now, I felt that I saw one.
- (a)Oppressed husband
- (b)Dominating husbands
- (c)Bossy husbands
- (d)Controlling husband
Answer
Why
Correct — A. Henpecked names the man who is nagged, criticised and ordered about by his wife — the pecking is done to him, not by him.
So the meaning has to describe someone on the receiving end of the control, and oppressed is the word in this set that does. The key takes option (a).
Options (b), (c) and (d) all name the person holding the power, which in the idiom is the wife, not the husband the sentence is looking at.
Why the others are wrong
- (b)Dominating husbands — Dominating puts the husband in the active role, but the idiom does the reverse — the henpecked man is the one dominated, and by his wife.
- (c)Bossy husbands — Bossy describes a person who gives the orders. The husband in this sentence takes them, which is the entire content of the word henpecked.
- (d)Controlling husband — A controlling husband holds the power in the marriage. Henpecked marks the man who has lost it, so this option faces the wrong way.
Concept
An idiom item is decided by who does what to whom, not by how strong the words feel.
Henpecked is an adjective for a man continually nagged, criticised and ordered about by his wife. The image behind it is a hen pecking, and the man is what gets pecked.
Three of the four options — dominating, bossy, controlling — are near-synonyms of one another and all describe the person holding the power. A single option is written from the other side of the relationship, and that is where the answer sits.
The option set mixes singular and plural: one husband in (a) and (d), husbands in (b) and (c), while the sentence itself says husbands. Number cannot decide this item. The direction of the control can.
Key facts
- Henpecked describes a man who is continually nagged or ordered about by his wife.
- The adjective always points at the husband, never at the wife doing the pecking.
- Oppressed means kept down or weighed on by someone with power over you.
Study next
Common traps
- Matching the strongest-sounding option instead of the one that faces the right way.
- Reading henpecked as a description of the wife rather than of the husband.
SSC gives the idiom inside a sentence and asks for its meaning in plain words.
The same format runs at 17 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.17 (pulled a long face) and at 26 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.14 (kept her cards close to her chest).
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.