SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 23 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 20 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 underlined idiom in the following sentence. Sejal visits the nearby temple off and on.

(a)Periodically
(b)Constantly
(c)Regularly
(d)Continuously

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Off and on, also written on and off, means from time to time, with breaks in between. Sejal goes to the temple sometimes, not on a settled schedule.

The idiom is built out of off, so its whole force is the interruption. Constantly and continuously describe action with no break at all and are out immediately.

Periodically keeps the breaks, and in everyday use it does the work of "from time to time", which is what the idiom claims. Option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Constantly — Constantly means all the time, without pause. Off and on says the reverse — the visits stop and start rather than run on.
(c)
Regularly — Regularly claims a settled, predictable schedule — a visit every Tuesday. Off and on describes visits that stop and start at no fixed interval, so regularly says more than the idiom does.
(d)
Continuously — Continuously means unbroken in time, one stretch with no gaps in it. It is the most emphatic of the wrong glosses and the furthest from an idiom built on interruption.

Concept

An idiom is not the sum of its words, but off and on is unusually transparent: the on and the off alternate, so the action keeps stopping and restarting.

Its standard glosses are from time to time, now and then, intermittently and occasionally. Every one of them carries repetition with gaps.

The four options here are graded by how much continuity they claim. Rank them from unbroken to broken, and the idiom sits at the broken end of the scale.

Regularly is the near miss, and the two words genuinely overlap: periodically is built on period and in careful use can mean at regular intervals.

What decides the item is everyday usage. Periodically routinely does duty for "from time to time", while regularly holds on to the promise of a schedule that off and on denies.

Key facts

Off and on and on and off are the same idiom, meaning from time to time or intermittently.
Its usual one-word glosses are occasionally, intermittently and periodically.
The same idiom is keyed as Now and then at 23 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.2.

Study next

Frequency idioms such as once in a blue moon, every now and then, and at a stretchIdioms built from a pair of opposites, such as by and large and give and takeSeparating periodically, regularly and continuously in ordinary use

Common traps

Reading off and on as a phrasal verb about switching something on and off.
Choosing Regularly because the visits do in fact repeat.
Treating constantly and continuously as far enough apart that one of them might fit.

SSC also set this idiom on the morning of the same exam day — 23 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.2, keyed Now and then — there as a bare idiom with no sentence around it.

The gloss offered changes between the two, so learn what the idiom means rather than the word that carried it last time.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Idioms and phrases — all 60 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.