Question

Select the most appropriate meaning of the given idiom:
A blessing in disguise
A. Something bad that isn’t recognised
B. Something good that isn’t recognised initially
C. Neither good nor bad
D. None of the above

Answer 1

Hint: An idiom is a set of words which together mean something but the meaning cannot be deciphered if the words are considered individually. To understand the meaning of an idiom, it is advised to analyse every word.

Complete answer:
To understand the meaning of “A blessing in disguise”, let us look at the literal meaning of the phrase.
We call something a blessing when something good happens to us and which we think God has done for us. God blesses us.
A disguise is something someone does when they do not want to be recognised. When you dress yourself up differently to have a different appearance so that your real identity is concealed, it is a disguise. Therefore, if something is disguised, it cannot be recognised easily.
Putting these two meanings together, let us see what the idiom says. A blessing in disguise, in its very literal meaning, means a blessing which could not be recognised. You only recognise it later that it was a blessing. Therefore, the correct option is option b, when you cannot recognise something initially as a good thing.

> Option a says that it is something bad which isn’t recognised. That is not possible because a blessing is a good thing, not a bad thing.

> Option c makes no sense since it says that it is something which is neither good nor bad. A blessing is always a good thing and never a bad thing.

>Option d is an option which confuses students to make them think that what they are thinking the answer to might be wrong.

Note: Sometimes all idioms cannot be deciphered by breaking it down. Some idioms have a completely different meaning to what its wordings are. For example, the idiom ‘cry over spilt milk’ has nothing to do with milk. ‘Spilt milk’ here refers to some work which has been destroyed or ruined.
Thus, students can learn up idioms from grammar books and websites.