english midterm

Question 1

Allegory

Answer 1

story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for each other, people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities.

Question 2

Alliteration

Answer 2

repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together.

Question 3

Anaphora

Answer 3

repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of a few lines.

Question 4

Anecdote

Answer 4

a brief story, told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something. Often shows character of an individual.

Question 5

Aphorism

Answer 5

brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life or of a principle or accepted general truth.

Question 6

Asyndeton

Answer 6

commas without conjunction to separate a series of words, thus emphasizing the parts equally; instead of x, y, and z…the writer uses x, y, z…see polysyndeton.

Question 7

Juxtaposition

Answer 7

form of contrast by which writers call attention to dissimilar ideas - by placing the different ideas side by side structurally.

Question 8

Motif

Answer 8

a recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation used throughout a work, unifying the work by tying the current situation to previous ones, or new ideas to the theme.

Question 9

Oxymoron

Answer 9

a figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase.

Question 10

Polysyndeton

Answer 10

sentence in which uses a conjunction with NO commas to separate the items in a series. Instead of X, Y, and Z…Polysyndeton results in X and Y and Z.