The following text is from Mark Twain's 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Tom, a child, has been told by his aunt to paint their house's fence.
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high.
As used in the text, what does the word "surveyed" most nearly mean?
Explanation
Context: Tom arrives with whitewash and brush, takes in the fence his aunt has told him to paint, and instantly loses his good mood.
Answer: D) Examined
Why? The sentence that follows gives the fence's dimensions, "Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high" — the measurements Tom takes in as he sizes up the job. "Surveyed" names that appraising look, and the melancholy that follows comes from what the inspection reveals about the scale of the work ahead.
Traps:
- A) Promoted → means advancing or publicizing something, which has nothing to do with looking at a fence.
- B) Organized → implies arranging or sorting; the fence is a single object Tom has not yet touched.
- C) Transformed → Tom has not begun painting, so nothing about the fence has changed.