English vocab Flashcards
Etymology
The study of the history of a word or phrase, its development and its origin.
Germanic languages
Languages such as Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse; words inherited from these languages by English are often associated with simplicity or strength.
Romance languages
Languages that derive from Latin; words inherited from these languages by English are often associated with beauty or sophistication.
Morphology
The study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language.
Derived word
A word formed from a root word combined with a prefix or a suffix.
Dialect
A particular form of a language specific to a region or social grou
Colloquial language
Words or turns of phrase specific to a region or country.
Revitalisation
An attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one.
Tragic hero
A character who is neither wholly good nor wholly evil, but on the good side of middling, who falls from a position of good fortune to a position of misery, suffering or death as a direct result of his/her own hamartia.
Hamartia
A word of Greek origin originally meaning ‘to miss the mark’ or ‘to err,’ it comes to mean a great or fatal flaw in the character of a tragic hero.
Soliloquy
An extended speech made while a character is alone or unheard on stage, representing the inner thoughts of a character voiced aloud for the benefit of the audience.
Verse
Written or spoken language arranged to fit a metre.
Rhyming couplet
A pair of successive lines that rhyme, often used in Shakespeare’s plays to signal the end of a scene or act, to indicate high emotion, or in speeches of magic.
Dramatic irony
This is a literary or theatrical situation in which an audience knows something that the characters do not know, often used to increase a sense of tension or for comedic effect.
Imagery
Figurative and/or metaphorical language used to stimulate the reader’s senses and create a strong, symbolic or memorable sensory impression.
The great chain of being
The belief in a set hierarchical structure of all matter and life, beginning from the top with God and the angels, and then moving to the monarch, nobles, and other humans, then to animals, plants, and finally rocks and minerals at the bottom.
Character Type
A method of categorising characters based on the perception of conventions and/or commonalities.
The Outsider
A character who does not belong to a particular circle, community, or group because s/he is in some way different. Often this character gains insights from standing on the edge of belonging.
Antagonist
A character in a narrative who actively opposes the protagonist, often as a rival or enemy.
Narrative arc
A framework that gives chronological structure to a story, often by guiding the plot from an inciting incident, through rising tensions, a climactic moment, falling tensions and some form of clear resolution.
Idealism
Having an unrealistic belief in perfection; often characterised by understanding and representing ideas or events in over-simplified terms. Often seen as the opposite to realism.
Realism
Attempting to understand or represent things and events as they believe they actually are. Often seen as the opposite to idealism.
Satire
The use of humour, irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose and criticise a person’s ignorance or vices, particularly in the context of politics or social issues.
Writing back
A process by which an author in a colonised space opposes the literary canon in their writing by challenging its traditional conceptions, conventions and/or ideas.
