SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 16 September 2025, Shift 1 · 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 13 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: Eat humble pie

(a)To demand an apology
(b)To celebrate one's success
(c)To accept insult or defeat gracefully
(d)To prepare for failure

Answer

Why

Correct — C. To eat humble pie is to admit you were wrong and accept the humiliation that comes with it, usually by apologising.

The person who eats it is the one who lost and swallows their pride. The option that describes someone accepting a defeat or an insult is 'To accept insult or defeat gracefully' → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
To demand an apology — Demand an apology reverses the roles. The one eating humble pie is the one who apologises, not the one who asks for the apology.
(b)
To celebrate one's success — Celebrate is the opposite situation. Humble pie is eaten after being proved wrong, not after a success.
(d)
To prepare for failure — Prepare for failure looks ahead to a defeat that has not happened. Humble pie comes after the mistake, when you own up to it.

Concept

Eat humble pie means to admit an error and accept the humiliation of doing so, typically with an apology.

The phrase is a pun on umble pie, a pie made from umbles, the edible inner organs of a deer. The modern meaning grew out of the play on humble.

Close relatives are eat crow and eat your words, both about owning up to a mistake.

Dictionaries define the idiom as admitting error and accepting humiliation. 'Gracefully' is the keyed option's own gloss; what it shares with the idiom is acceptance of defeat, which no other option offers.

Key facts

Eat humble pie: admit you were wrong and accept the humiliation, usually with an apology.
The phrase puns on umble pie, made from umbles, the edible inner organs of a deer.
Eat crow and eat your words carry the same idea of owning up to a mistake.

Study next

Idioms of owning up: eat crow, eat your words, make a clean breast of itIdioms of pride and humiliation: swallow your pride, lose faceIdioms of cowardice, where 'admit defeat gracefully' is a wrong gloss

Common traps

Picking 'To demand an apology' because the idiom is about apologies, without checking who apologises
Carrying the gloss 'defeat gracefully' to another idiom: it is a wrong option for Show the white feather

The idiom is set bare, with four short paraphrases, under the stem 'Choose the correct meaning of idiom'.

Eat crow, the same idea, is asked at 21 Sep 2025, 09:00, English Q.10, keyed 'Admit one's error and endure humiliation'.

At 13 Sep 2025, 16:00, English Q.3, 'To admit defeat gracefully' is a wrong option for Show the white feather, keyed 'To act cowardly'.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Idioms and phrases — all 97 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.