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Question

Choose the correct meaning of the idiom: Sit on the fence

This question was previously asked in
SSC CHSL 2025 Tier 1 Question Paper (21-Nov-2025) (Shift 1)
The correct answer is

To refuse to give an opinion or take a side

The task is to identify the meaning of the idiom sit on the fence, and an idiom is a fixed, figurative expression whose overall sense cannot be assembled from the literal meanings of its separate words.

The picture the phrase paints is of a person perched on the top rail of a fence that divides two fields, with the option of climbing down on either side but choosing to stay up on the boundary line instead.

Because the fence marks the border between two sides, staying up on it stands for staying between two positions in an argument, election or dispute without moving towards either one.

Applied to opinions, then, the idiom describes someone who deliberately withholds their own view, declining to say which party, plan or side they actually support.

The stress falls on the refusal to commit: the person is not undecided by accident but is consciously avoiding taking a clear stand.

Option B, "To refuse to give an opinion or take a side", captures exactly this deliberate non-commitment, so it is the correct meaning.

"To be very decisive about a matter" states the opposite behaviour; "to carefully choose a position" implies a choice has in fact been made; and "to be in a neutral, relaxed position" wrongly reads the phrase literally, stressing bodily comfort rather than the avoidance of commitment.

Hence the idiom means To refuse to give an opinion or take a side.

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