The example that explains one student’s confusion may help several who never asked.

Questions in a room are rarely representative. One person asks, and behind them sit several others with the same gap who did not want to be the one to say so, or who did not yet know they were confused. So the answer you give to a single question is almost never a private transaction. Treating it as an interruption to be handled quickly wastes the most useful moment available.

Answer the next question to the whole room rather than to the person who asked. Give the concrete example instead of the restated definition. And say plainly that if one person wondered, others probably did too.