Idioms and Phrases for SSC and Bank PO (IBPS): The Ultimate Guide (1 approach to follow and 2 to avoid)
The complete beginner's guide — Courses, List of idioms, PDFs, and much more.
Idioms and Phrases are one of the most important topics for any exam worth its salt, be it SSC, Banks PO IBPS, Railways, or any other of their ilk.
If we talk about SSC, the total number of questions based on idioms and phrases asked in the pre and mains exam combined is 12–15. Yet, Idioms are one of those topics which are often ignored by students as being too easy or worthless.
Idioms and Phrases Basics
What is an Idiom?
As per the Oxford Learners Dictionaries —
An idiom is a group of words whose meaning differs from the meanings of the individual words. For example- ‘Let the cat out of the bag’ is an idiom meaning to tell a secret by mistake.
What is a Phrase?
Similarly, a phrase is a ‘small group of words which stand together to represent something.’ For example, ‘a herd of cows’, ‘needless to say’ or ‘the ways of the world’.
What is the difference between an Idiom and a Phrase?
The difference between the idioms and phrases is purely technical, and from an exam point of view, it is unimportant.
In simplest terms, the meaning of a phrase can be deduced from its constituent words, whereas the meaning of an idiom cannot be guessed from the words it is built from.
Consider the two examples given above. The meaning of the phrase ‘a herd of cows’ can be surmised from the individual words, whereas the meaning of the idiom ‘Let the cat out of the bag’ cannot be determined from its words.
As far as your exam preparation goes, the distinction between the two is irrelevant and they should be studied together. They have far more similarities than differences.
Why are the Idioms and Phrases important for SSC, Bank IBPS, and other exams
Idioms and phrases are extremely important for these exams as they carry huge weightage.
In SSC CGL, about 10 questions are asked in the mains exam and 2–3 questions in the pre-exam. In such competitive times, these 12–13 marks can build or break your chances of selection.
How many Idioms and Phrases are there and how many should I learn to qualify for the SSC or Bank/IBPS exam?
There are over twenty thousand idioms and phrases in the English language, but only about 750 of them are used widely. Just like there are over a million words but you need an active vocabulary of only about 10000–12000 to qualify for the SSC or Bank PO exams.
There’s good news for you–you already know about 8000–9000 words. So you need to learn only an additional 3000 words (including idioms and phrases) to feel fully confident for the exam.
Many online teachers on YouTube claim to teach over 3000 or 4000 idioms and 10000–15000 vocabs for your exam preparation. You should be aware, it's a trap to impress you and instill fear within you so that you take their coaching to succeed in the exam.
During my SSC CGL preparation in 2012, I started from zero (being a student of Hindi medium throughout). During my preparation of 3 months, learned only about 700 to 800 idioms and phrases and got selected in SSC CGL in my first attempt.
So rest assured, if you are starting from the very beginning like me, you have to cover only about 750 idioms and 2000–2500 new vocab words. If you have studied in the English medium, then the actual figures for you might be even lower.
List of Idioms and Phrases important for SSC CGL, CHSL, and Bank PO exams
As I said above, you need about 750 idioms and phrases to do well in the SSC exam. I have compiled these 750 idioms from the last 25 years of SSC papers. You can find all these idioms in the article below and also download them in pdf format.
How to learn idioms and phrases for SSC or Bank IBPS PO exam?
In this section, I shall detail the best way which you can follow to easily understand and remember the idioms for your lifetime. Also, shall the need arises, you can also use them in sentences.
Before enlisting the methods to adopt, I shall detail what approach you shouldn’t follow.
Don’t cram using mnemonics or arbitrary stories
I have observed that, when it comes to memorizing idioms and phrases or vocabulary of any kind, students as well as teachers focus on rote-learning or using mnemonic devices such as arbitrary and absurd stories as a cue to remember the meaning of the idiom.
Perhaps an example will better prove my point. Consider the idiom — ‘Hit the hay’.
I have seen teachers trying to make arbitrary and absurd stories as mnemonic devices to help students memorize these idioms. For e.g. watch this video -
The explanation offered by the teacher is artificial & contrived. It isn’t convincing at all (no offense to Barkha mam, sorry!). A better explanation would be through the story of the origin of this idiom.
This idiom has come from the olden times when the less privileged people couldn’t afford a comfortable mattress to sleep on. To avoid sleeping on the hard floor, they started filling large quantities of hay (=भूसा) into large sacks (=बोरा, थैला, झोला) which they then used as mattresses. This practice is still prevalent in some poorer parts of the world.
This 200 years' old practice has given us two idioms — ‘Hit the sack’ and ‘Hit the hay’, both of whom mean ‘go to sleep’.
Did you see how this explanation is neater, cleaner, and a lot more sensible than the arbitrary story told by the teacher? It has also subtly introduced another idiom (hit the sack) which originated together with our idiom under discussion (hit the hay).
Thus we can deduce that the best way to learn Idioms and Phrases — or any kind of vocabulary for the matter — is through their origins.
You can check out my free mini-course on idioms and phrases on Udemy, which cover this topic using origin stories.
Before extolling the virtues of learning idioms through origins, allow me to introduce another widely used practice that is equally bad.
Idioms and phrases pdf for SSC
Long pdfs containing the lists of idioms are very popular among SSC aspirants. While they are a wonderful tool for revision, they are a poor device if you are learning idioms for the first time.
Much of the reason is the same as I explained in the above sub-section. You can’t cram idioms without their context. Neither you will learn their meanings nor will they interest you anymore.
A better approach is through their backstories and origins. Because the human mind is better adept at learning stories rather than individual bits of facts, the meanings of idioms through stories will remain in your mind for a longer time.
Here’s the link to the pdf notes which I have designed to go along with my free idioms course. You can download them for free from here or from the course itself, where these notes are available as resources.
How to learn idioms and phrases through their origins
This technique is the least popular, and yet it is the most powerful method. It is like a Swiss Army knife that helps you in multiple ways. Let’s see them one by one.
a. You truly understand the meaning of an idiom (and you retain it for life)
Using this method, you can learn idioms with their origins, backstories, the contexts in which the idiom originated, and even the multiple meanings associated with it.
Take, for example — ‘keep at bay’.
If you found this idiom in some ‘idioms and phrases’ lists or pdfs available online, you will notice its meaning written as — ‘to keep a distance’. This meaning is technically correct, but only in a certain context.
For example, you can’t use this idiom like this — I keep my friends at bay. This usage is technically wrong.
The exact meaning of this idiom is — ‘to keep something/someone at a distance so that it can’t attack you or harm you.
In this idiom, the word ‘bay’ refers to the ‘barking of the dog with long sounds’ or ‘to howl’ (लंबी आवाजों के साथ भोंकना). This idiom has come to us from ancient times when the hunters used to poach wild animals. Sometimes, the tables were turned and the wild animals attacked the hunters in return.
When the animal was in the attacking position, the hunters tried to keep him at bay, so that the animal is limited to howling and making sounds only and doesn’t attack them.
The proper usage of this idiom is in these examples —
- The soldiers kept the attackers at bay. [=they did not allow the attackers to come closer]
- Armed with a gun, he held the police at bay [=he did not allow the police to arrest him] for 10 hours.
I hope this picture has made it crystal clear what this idiom means and in what scenarios does it apply.
b. You learn related idioms at the same time
This is another benefit of this approach. When you learn idioms through their origins, you learn all other idioms which are formed on a similar theme of connotation.
For example, in the section above, I told you the idiom ‘hit the hay’, but learning the origin of this idiom also gave you another idiom — ‘hit the sack’- which also means ‘go to sleep’.
In a similar vein, there’s another idiom — ‘baying for blood’. This idiom also has the same origin as the one we discussed above — ‘keep at bay’.
When the wild animal was in the attacking position and making long sounds, it showed that it is in the attacking mode. In other words, it is threatening violence.
Thus we can use this idiom in this example sentence — ‘The angry mob is baying for blood [=angrily demanding or threatening violence] of the rapist.’
Did you observe how learning one origin leads to learning other associated idioms as well?
c. You learn all the meanings of an idiom
Many English idioms, just like words, have multiple meanings.
When you cram idioms with no rhyme or reason, you often focus on the most popular meaning, which might not be the one asked in the exam. Let’s understand it with the help of an example.
Consider the idiom — Cut and dried.
This phrase has three different but related meanings. If you simply crammed the meaning of this idiom using crude devices such as mnemonics, you risk ignoring two equally important meanings.
The meaning that you will find in most word lists is — prearranged or unchangeable. But two more meanings are hidden from you. All three meanings of this idiom are —
- Something already decided and unchangeable at a later stage (ex — There are no cut-and-dried solutions here. We need to come up with something.)
- Not fresh or interesting (ex-The lecture was, as usual, cut and dried.)
- Ready-made and in which not much is left to be done. (Ex — The procedure is not quite cut and dried; there’s definitely room for improvisation.)
Now, you might wonder how you can remember all three meanings of this idiom, given that you have 750 other idioms to learn for the exam. The trick is actually quite simple — learn the origin and the meanings will follow.
This idiom dates back to the times when dried herbs were sold in the market. They lacked freshness and you couldn’t make any changes to them.
Thus, this practice has given us three meanings that are related and have originated together from the same scenario.
Enough about the virtues of origins and backstories of idioms. Now the question arises: where can you find all the origin stories of all the idioms which are important for SSC.
Where to find the origin stories of all the idioms?
The simple answer to this question is — nowhere.
The reason the teachers are not teaching Idioms and Phrases using backstories is that these are difficult to find. There’s no single resource that enlists all the idioms with their origins.
Sure, there are some resources including some websites, YouTube videos, and even some books, which cover some idioms, but there was no comprehensive resource that covers all the idioms and their origins — until recently.
Seeing this void in the market, I set out to create such a resource that is available as a free mini-course on Udemy. You can enroll in it for free and consume it at your own pace.
I took the idioms and phrases asked in the last 20 years of the SSC CGL exam and scoured the Internet for their backstories. I read close to 4–5 articles on every idiom and spent about 10–12 minutes on each of them. After working hard for 4 months in such a manner, I designed this course.
I also have a full-length paid course on Udemy which contains over 600 idioms, 500 vocab through roots, Synonyms-Antonyms and One-word substitutions. If you are preparing for SSC, Banks IBPS, Railways, or other similar exams, this is indispensable for you. You must check it out.
Hi, if we are meeting for the first time, I am Gauri Shanker, two time SSC CGL qualifier (2012 and 2014). I have worked as CBI Sub-Inspector from Oct 2013 to Jan 2016. Presently I am working as an Income Tax Inspector since September 2016. I write about SSC, English preparation, Vocabulary developments, and a little about my job experience in CBI.
