SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 26 September 2024, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 7 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 correct meaning of the underlined idiom in the following sentence. Lucy’s conceited conduct with her colleagues has left her high and dry

(a)Impoverished
(b)Superseding
(c)Helpless
(d)Surrounded by people

Answer

Why

Correct — C. High and dry means left stranded, with no help and no way out. The image behind it is nautical: a boat beached above the waterline when the tide falls cannot refloat itself.

Read the frame the sentence puts round the idiom — left her high and dry. That tells you the phrase names a state Lucy has been put into by others.

Conceited conduct drives colleagues away, so she is left with nobody to turn to. That is helpless, option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Impoverished — Impoverished means made poor. High and dry can leave someone without resources, but its core sense is being stranded without help, and the sentence points at Lucy's colleagues, not her money.
(b)
Superseding — Superseding means taking another person's place. That is something the subject does to others, while left her high and dry describes something done to her — the grammar rules the option out before the meaning does.
(d)
Surrounded by people — Surrounded by people is the reverse of the idiom. Conceited conduct towards colleagues is precisely what empties the room, which is why the sentence reaches for high and dry.

Concept

An idiom is fixed: its meaning cannot be assembled from high and from dry. Read the words around it instead.

Left her plus a person tells you the phrase describes a condition she has been reduced to, not an act she performed.

The origin fixes the sense. A vessel left high and dry sits above the water where the tide cannot reach it, stuck and dependent on others.

Applied to a person it means abandoned without support — helpless — which is what conceited conduct earns her.

Impoverished is the sharper trap, because the idiom is sometimes used of being left without money. The cause this sentence supplies is social, her conduct with colleagues, not financial.

Key facts

High and dry means left without help or resources, stranded.
The image is nautical: a boat beached above the waterline when the tide goes out.
Conceited means having an excessively high opinion of oneself.
The idiom is normally used with leave: left high and dry.

Study next

Nautical idioms in English, such as high and dry, in the same boat and plain sailingIdioms of abandonment, such as left in the lurch and left high and dryReading the verb before an idiom to decide whether it names a state or an action

Common traps

Taking dry literally and reaching for a money or drought reading
Choosing an option that describes Lucy's behaviour rather than her situation

SSC underlines an idiom in an invented sentence and offers one-word or short-phrase meanings, with a literal reading planted among them.

Idiom-meaning items also run at 12 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.5 (a fish out of water, keyed Uncomfortable) and 17 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.17 (pulled a long face, keyed To look saddened).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.