SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 15 September 2025, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 5 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.

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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: Steal a march on

(a)Surrender unexpectedly
(b)Gain an advantage by acting before others do
(c)Betray one’s allies
(d)Escape punishment

Answer

Why

Correct — B. To steal a march on someone is to gain an advantage over them, typically by acting before they do.

The phrase comes from warfare: an army that stole a march moved without the enemy's knowledge and gained ground on them. Steal here means 'do secretly', as in steal a glance, not 'take'.

Acting first to get ahead is 'Gain an advantage by acting before others do' → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Surrender unexpectedly — Surrender unexpectedly reverses the outcome. Stealing a march wins ground from a rival; surrendering gives ground up. The word march suggests armies, but not defeat.
(c)
Betray one’s allies — Betray one's allies reads steal as wrongdoing. In this idiom steal means 'secretly', and the person you steal a march on is a rival, not an ally.
(d)
Escape punishment — Escape punishment has no link to this idiom. To steal a march is to get ahead of a rival, not to get away from a penalty.

Concept

The idiom turns on an older sense of steal: to move or act secretly, without being noticed. The same sense survives in steal a glance and steal into a room.

Take steal as theft and an option like Betray one's allies starts to look plausible. Take it as stealth and the phrase becomes an early, unnoticed move that puts you ahead of a rival.

In business, one company steals a march on another by launching a product first.

Compare jump the gun, which also means acting early, but as a fault: starting before the proper time. Stealing a march is early action that pays off; jumping the gun is early action that is premature.

Key facts

Steal a march on someone means gain an advantage over them, typically by acting before they do.
The phrase comes from military use, where an army moved without the enemy's knowledge.
Steal also means to move quietly or secretly, as in steal into a room.
Jump the gun means act before the proper time.

Study next

Idioms of acting first: get the jump on, beat someone to the punch, jump the gunOther idioms with steal: steal the show, steal someone's thunder, steal a glance

Common traps

Reading steal as theft and picking Betray one's allies
Treating steal a march as the same as jump the gun, which means acting too early

11 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.5 asks the meaning of Jump the gun and keys To do something too soon and too quickly, the premature cousin of this idiom.

The item before this one, English Q.4 of this paper, uses the same idiom frame for Tooth and nail.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

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