Within a week, the wood we left outside had begun to decay.
Hello!
The connotative meaning of a word means the way that the word can be understood differently than its dictionary definition.
The denotative meaning of a word means the literal definition.
1) Cheap is rather connotative because when a person is said to be "cheap", it can mean that he/she is frugal. Inexpensive is much more literal, and it may refer to an item or service costing a small amount of money.
2) Skinny can be seen in either a negative or positive way, whereas slender is almost always used in a positive way and often refers to a person who is thin.
3) Stubborn can either refer to a strong-willed person or somebody who is headstrong and difficult to deal with. A more denotative meaning is persevering, which means when a person continues to move forward despite any failures he may have encountered in the past. Stubborn is seen in a more negative way and persevering is rather positive.
4) The word "aggressive" is often associated with malice. Assertive is used when referring to someone/something that is straightforward and candid.
5) Lazy is seen in a negative way and often refers to people/things that lack productiveness. Relaxed often means that a person is productive, yet unstressed.
I hope this answers your question!
Answer:
The passage that effectively paraphrases the excerpt is:
D. For a long time, Mike was the lowest ape in male-dominance ranking, but later on he rose impressively to the top.
Explanation:
Paraphrasing means rewording a passage or a sentence said or written by someone else. It is important to understand the importance of rewording here, because a paraphrase only exists when we do it properly. We need to say the same thing, but with different words.
<u>That is why options A through C are not good paraphrases. They use the same words or phrases used in the original excerpt. Letter D, on the other hand, effectively rewords the passage. It conveys the same message, but with different words. For that reason, letter D is the correct option.</u>
Irving writes that no one really knows what happened to Tom's wife, however when Tom finds the missing checked cloth with a heart and liver inside and observes the scene near it, he concludes that his wife must have battled the devil and eventually lost--not easily, though, because Tom notices that there were
"many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and several handsful of hair, that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of the woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience."
The description is ironic on a couple of counts. First, the fact that Tom's wife was so stingy and stubborn that she would have given the devil a harsh time bargaining and fighting fits into Irving's typical, ironic description of the nagging wife. Secondly, the last sentence refers back to the abuse that Tom often suffered at the hands of his wife, and he almost sympathizes for the devil in regards to the battle between him and Mrs. Walker.