Question

[MC]

Read the text, then answer the question that follows:

Wild animals as viewed from a mountain camp—Camille Grant, October 2011

Through my binoculars, I viewed a group of wild animals in action. A pride of lions was sleeping when a small, yellow bus pulled up beside them. Tourists on a safari were packed into the bus like sardines in a can. Armed with cameras, they invaded the lions' territory, hoping to capture the perfect photograph. The crowd leaned out the windows, hooting and hollering, until the lions awoke. When the lions moved away, the bus rolled after them, relentlessly stalking the pride. One of the lions turned and roared to protect the young. This was greeted with cheers and a celebratory honk of the bus horn. The curious visitors observed the lions' routine for an hour before moving on. Leaving a cloud of dust, the bus headed away, taking the wild animals off to disturb someone else's home.

Review the following line from the text:

The crowd leaned out the windows, hooting and hollering, until the lions awoke.

To create a more negative connotation, the author could have replaced the word crowd with which of the following synonyms?

Assembly
Gathering
Group
Mob (language arts)

Answer 1

Mob.

Step-by-step explanation:

A connotation of a word refers to the indirect meaning, the suggested meaning of a given word. In short, we can say the connotative meaning of a word is the idea that a word implies or suggests.

In the given line, the word "crowd" is used to refer to the group of tourists on the bus. A "crowd" generally refers to an unruly or disorganized group of people. So, to create a more negative connotation of the word, we can replace "crowd" with "mob" to refer to the negative meaning of a group of people. A "mob" generally refers to a group of people who are intent on making or creating trouble, disturbance.

Thus, the correct answer is mob.