Some people will and some people won't be able to do that, and those who can't very likely will blame themselves for not being able to understand it. But as educators we need to make sure we give people without mental images actual images they can look at.
I have trouble with linguistic reasoning and I would greatly struggle with a phrase like this, even in a context where I am sure the meaning should be obvious. Visually I can imagine hundreds of ways to slice a donut and hundreds of ways to intersect that with hundreds of cylinders. But linguistically I am slow and dumb :) and would need you to specify how you're slicing the donut and where the cylinder is going.
I have to work hard to connect verbal reasoning with non-verbal implicit information - even in simple numbers sometimes I have to carefully think "no, she said from zero, that means you start AT zero, not at one. Otherwise she would have said after zero." The verbal confusion - and psychological insecurity - can sometimes obliterate what had been a solid intuitive understanding of the problem.
A.) try to express the details using my hands or
B.) Explain it more detailed (e.g. Imagine the donat is laying flat on the desk and we slice it sideways so we get two rings, we take half of it, ..." or best
C.) Show a visualization (obviously the best option)
Language is imprecise as you rightfully mentioned and mamy people will have similar problems to yours, which is why adding the context needed to have the picture is needed.
There is a natural instinct to return back to my normal way.
Thank you for the insight!