ACT® · Reading — Craft and Structure: Word Meanings and Word Choice
Interpreting Basic Figurative Language
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow does a metaphor superimpose two images so one lends its properties to the other?
- How it worksHow does an idiom end up meaning something none of its words mean alone?
- Worked exampleShow me unpacking: the committee's enthusiasm evaporated before the second meeting.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't a figurative phrase just decoration you could delete without losing meaning?
Check yourself
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Informational passage:
The proposal had 33 signatures when it reached the council and 9 by the time it came to a vote 13 weeks later. Nobody withdrew in writing. No letter was sent, and no meeting recorded a change of mind by anybody. The committee's enthusiasm evaporated before the second meeting, and the minutes record it only as a change in the order of business: the item moved from second to last, and then to a list of matters carried forward, where it stayed. The proposal was never voted down and it was never voted on.
The phrase enthusiasm evaporated most nearly conveys that the support:End of topic.