SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 14 September 2025, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 3 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: Blow hot and cold

(a)To change one’s mood or opinion frequently
(b)To talk boastfully
(c)To enjoy both success and failure
(d)To remain consistent in behavior

Answer

Why

Correct — A. To blow hot and cold is to keep changing your attitude, keen one moment and cool the next: 'The board has blown hot and cold on the merger for months.'

The idiom is about inconsistency, and option (a) says exactly that: to change one's mood or opinion frequently.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
To talk boastfully — Talking boastfully is blowing your own trumpet. Blow hot and cold shares the verb blow but says nothing about boasting, only about a shifting stance.
(c)
To enjoy both success and failure — Success and failure reads hot and cold as good times and bad. The idiom describes a person's changing attitude, not the ups and downs of their fortunes.
(d)
To remain consistent in behavior — Remaining consistent is the exact opposite of the idiom. Someone who blows hot and cold is, by definition, inconsistent.

Concept

To blow hot and cold means to vacillate: to favour something at one moment and oppose it the next, so nobody can rely on where you stand.

The phrase is traced to Aesop's fable of the satyr and the traveller. The man blows on his cold fingers to warm them, then on his hot food to cool it, and the satyr wants nothing more to do with someone who can blow hot and cold with the same breath.

Close equivalents: waver, dither, chop and change, flip-flop.

Hot and cold here are attitudes, warm enthusiasm and cool indifference, not good and bad fortune. That misreading is what makes option (c) tempting.

Key facts

Blow hot and cold means to keep changing your attitude or opinion.
The idiom is traced to Aesop's fable of the satyr and the traveller.
Close equivalents: vacillate, waver, chop and change, flip-flop.

Study next

Idioms of indecision: sit on the fence, in two minds, chop and changeIdioms of boasting: blow your own trumpet, talk big

Common traps

Reading hot and cold as good and bad fortune, which leads to option (c)
Linking it with blow your own trumpet because both begin with blow, which leads to option (b)

The same idiom sits among the wrong options at 24 Sep 2024, 16:00, English Q.1, where the blank after finishing a marathon is keyed pat myself on the back.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

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