Question

"To catch a tartar" means ____.

• A. To trap a wanted criminal with great difficulty
• B. To catch a dangerous person
• C. To catch a person who is more than one's match
• D. To meet with disaster

Hint:

Think about the old story of a soldier who tries to capture a fierce Tartar warrior and gets overpowered instead.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

This question tests an English idiom, "to catch a tartar."

1. To trap a wanted criminal with great difficulty: This makes "tartar" sound like a criminal on the run, but the idiom is not about crime or arrests.
2. To catch a dangerous person: A tartar was historically seen as a fierce, hard to control person, so this option captures the sense of catching someone tough and unpredictable, which is why the key treats it as correct here.
3. To catch a person who is more than one's match: This is close to the core idea too, since the phrase warns that the person you catch turns out stronger than you expected, but the key does not pick this reading.
4. To meet with disaster: This describes an outcome, not the act of catching someone, so it does not fit the idiom.

The idiom "catch a tartar" traces back to old tales of soldiers who set out to capture a Tartar warrior and got overpowered instead. Going by the given key, option B is marked correct because it points to catching someone fierce and hard to handle.

Note: many standard references define this idiom as "to attack or deal with a person who turns out to be more than one's match" (option C). If your source treats C as correct, use that instead.