SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 22 September 2025, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 3 of 98

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: Cook someone’s goose

(a)Help someone succeed
(b)Ruin someone’s plans or prospects
(c)Save someone from trouble
(d)Make fun of someone

Answer

Why

Correct — B. To cook someone's goose is to spoil their plans or ruin their chances.

The words give no clue on their own; the phrase has to be learnt whole. Its related form, 'your goose is cooked', means you are in serious trouble and your chances are gone.

Ruin someone's plans or prospects says the same → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Help someone succeed — Help someone succeed is the reverse. Cooking someone's goose ends their chances; it does not advance them.
(c)
Save someone from trouble — Save someone from trouble is also the reverse. The idiom puts someone in trouble, as 'your goose is cooked' shows.
(d)
Make fun of someone — Make fun of someone is mockery, not ruin. English has a separate idiom for that, poke fun at. Cooking someone's goose does real damage to their prospects.

Concept

An idiom's meaning is fixed by use, not by its words. Cook someone's goose means to ruin someone's plans or chances, and someone's goose is cooked means they are finished or in serious trouble.

The options split into two opposites (Help someone succeed, Save someone from trouble), one unrelated sense (Make fun of someone) and the key.

Knowing only that the idiom is bad news for the someone rules out both opposites at once.

The someone in the idiom is the one who suffers. 'The scandal cooked his goose' means the scandal ruined his chances, not that he did anything himself.

Key facts

Cook someone's goose means to spoil someone's plans or ruin their chances.
Someone's goose is cooked means they are in serious trouble, or their chances are finished.
Poke fun at means to tease or ridicule.

Study next

Idioms of spoiling someone's plans, such as put paid to, scupper, and pull the rug out from under someoneGoose idioms with fixed meanings, such as a wild-goose chase and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs

Common traps

Reading cook as roast, in its slang sense of mocking someone, and choosing Make fun of someone

The same idiom is asked inside a sentence at 10 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.2: 'Your so-called friend has cooked your goose', keyed 'To interfere with, disrupt or ruin something for someone'.

Here it is asked bare, in the frame 'Choose the correct meaning of idiom'.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

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