I had an exam today (Egyptian GSEC english exam) and in a passage about library it said:
The book slipped from his hands and fell on the floor with loud noise, 20 eyes looked at him and his face turned red.....
It then asked: approximately,how many persons where at the library?
Ten or twenty or forty
But I would like to know if twenty eyes represent 10 persons or is it like a metaphor and represents 20 persons?
Is this expression even correct?
Edit : in the passage it was obvious that it is a normal library with normal people i just cut a part out of its context that serves the question
Answer
No, it literally means 20 eyes, or 20 eyeballs – not 20 pairs of eyes. However, it's impossible to answer this question unless you assume
- that everyone at the library looked up at him,
- that everyone had two eyes, and
- that all of them were people (= persons).
Presuming all of the above, there were 11 people at the library in total that I count. This is still an approximation because the initial "20 eyes" sounds like an estimate in the original sentence merely by virtue of twenty being a round number.
To address your comment:
Rounding can be a form of estimation. 11 rounded to the nearest ten is 10, which would be a valid answer when asked for an approximation.
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