Grammar – How the Number of Eyes Represents the Number of Persons

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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

Best 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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