SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 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 given idiom. Let the dust settle

(a)To make a space tidy
(b)To wait for a situation to become clear or certain
(c)Wait for the other person to make a move
(d)To make use of a situation

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Let the dust settle is figurative. After a disturbance — a quarrel, a crisis, a sudden change — you hold off until the confusion clears before acting or judging.

The image behind it is dust thrown up by a commotion, which takes time to fall and blocks the view until it does.

Option (b), 'to wait for a situation to become clear or certain', names both halves of that: the waiting and the clarity being waited for.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
To make a space tidy — This reads dust literally. Tidying a room is what the words say, not what the phrase means, and an idiom is never read word by word.
(c)
Wait for the other person to make a move — This is about a rival's move. You can let the dust settle with nobody opposing you at all, after a bereavement or a reorganisation, so an opponent is not part of the meaning.
(d)
To make use of a situation — This is the opposite posture. Making use of a situation means acting on it, while letting the dust settle means holding back until the situation can be read.

Concept

An idiom's meaning is not the sum of its words, so the test is whether an option paraphrases the whole phrase or just one word inside it.

Let the dust settle belongs to the family of English idioms built on the aftermath of disturbance: things are stirred up, nothing can be seen clearly, and the advice is to wait. It carries no idea of cleaning and none of an opponent.

Its usual frame is advisory — 'let the dust settle before you decide' — which is why the keyed gloss begins with 'to wait'.

Three of the four options are built from something real about the phrase: the literal dust, the waiting, and the idea of a situation being used. Only the second matches the whole idiom, which is how idiom items are usually made hard.

Key facts

Let the dust settle means to wait until a confused or turbulent situation becomes clear before acting.
The idiom is advisory and usually sits before a decision verb, as in 'let the dust settle before you decide'.
An idiom is a fixed expression whose meaning cannot be worked out from its individual words.

Study next

Idioms of waiting and timing: let the dust settle, bide your time, jump the gunIdioms whose literal reading is a planted distractorIdiom substitution items, where the phrase replaces an underlined segment

Common traps

Choosing the literal 'make a space tidy' because dust is a cleaning word.
Confusing waiting for clarity with waiting for someone else to act, when the idiom is about a situation rather than a person.

SSC sets an idiom either as a bare phrase with four glosses, as here, or embedded in a sentence to be substituted. The substitution form is used in this same paper at English Q.17, where 'treated her with contempt' keys 'Turned up their nose at her'.

The bare-gloss form is asked 09 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.18 and 11 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.5.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.