SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 14 September 2025, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 2 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 11 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Choose the correct meaning of idiom: Bury the hatchet

(a)To reconcile after a conflict
(b)To deepen hostility
(c)To run away
(d)To forget someone's name

Answer

Why

Correct — A. To bury the hatchet is to end a quarrel and make peace. A hatchet is a small axe, standing here for a weapon, and burying it puts it out of use.

So the idiom describes two sides who stop fighting and settle their differences: To reconcile after a conflict → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
To deepen hostility — To deepen hostility is the reverse of the idiom. Putting the weapon away ends the fight; it does not sharpen it.
(c)
To run away — To run away is about fleeing a fight, and the idiom is about ending one. The idiom for running away is take to one's heels.
(d)
To forget someone's name — To forget someone's name takes bury as bury in memory. The hatchet is a weapon, so the idiom is about hostility, not memory.

Concept

An idiom item is decided by the figurative meaning, not the literal words.

A hatchet is a small axe. Burying it puts the weapon out of reach, so the phrase means to stop fighting and become friendly again.

Dictionaries trace it to a Native American custom of burying weapons when peace was made. Today it is used of any settled quarrel, between rivals, families or colleagues.

Do not confuse it with hatchet job, a fierce attack on someone in speech or writing. That phrase uses the same weapon for hostility, the sense option (b) reaches for.

Key facts

Bury the hatchet means to end a quarrel and become friendly again.
A hatchet is a small axe.
Extend an olive branch means to make an offer of peace.
At daggers drawn means in a state of bitter hostility.

Study next

Idioms of making peace: extend an olive branch, let bygones be bygones, patch upIdioms of open hostility: at daggers drawn, cross swords, up in arms

Common traps

Taking bury as bury in memory, which leads to option (d)
Reading the weapon as a sign of more fighting, which leads to option (b)

The instruction is Choose the correct meaning of idiom, with one figurative meaning against three that misread the words.

The same instruction appears at 12 Sep 2025, 09:00, English Q.2 (Hobson's choice), 12 Sep 2025, 16:00, English Q.3 (Fly off the handle) and 14 Sep 2025, 12:30, English Q.3 (Blow hot and cold).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Idioms and phrases — all 71 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.