The word "earth-shattering" is best classified as figurative. It is used to convey a sense of significance or impact rather than its literal meaning (which would imply something that causes the earth to actually shatter).
Read the passage below:
The animal, which roamed the seas 78-million years ago, is about 15-feet long — the length of a minibus — and bones indicate that the baby plesiosaur would have been as long as six feet when born.
The finding, published in the online edition of the journal Science on Thursday, is definitive evidence that the giant sea creature gave birth to single, live offspring, rather than laying eggs, like most reptiles, says paleontologist and lead author F. Robin O’Keefe. This reproductive behavior also indicates that the animals were gregarious social creatures that cared for their young, similar to toothed whales or dolphins, according to the paper.
“What is earth-shattering is that plesiosaurs are doing it differently than other reptiles,” O’Keefe said. “Instead of having lots of little babies, they’re having one big baby — a single, very large fetus.”
Classify the word earth-shattering as denotative, connotative, or figurative.
(1 point)
Responses
denotative
denotative
connotative
connotative
figurative
figurative
1 answer