Semester review Odyssey Vocab Flashcards
Plunder (n.):
goods taken by force
Squall (n.):
A brief violent storm with strong winds
Dispatched (v.):
to send off or away with speed, to finish quickly
Mammoth (adj.):
Enormous
Bereft (v.):
left in a sad and lonely state
Cherishes (v.):
Holds dear; feels love for
Insidious (adj.):
Characterized by treachery, disloyalty, deceit; EVIL
Dissemble (v):
conceal with false appearances, disguise
Lithe (adj.):
supple; limber; flexible
Incredulity (n.):
inability to believe; incredible
Bemusing (V.):
Stupefying or muddling; confusing
Glowering (v.):
staring with sullen anger; scowling
Maudlin (adj.):
Tearfully sentimental from too much liquor (Granny! Country songs!)
Contempt (n.):
Actions or attitude of a person toward someone of
something he or she considers low or worthless
(think of someone who is held in contempt of a court)
Epithet:
Adjective or descriptive phrase that is regularly used to
characterize a person, place or thing.
(“Odysseus, Raider of Cities” or “the gray-eyed Athena”)
Personification:
kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human
(“Dawn with ringlets shining” or “rosy-fingered dawn” or “the moon smiled down”)
Flashback:
scene in a movie, play, short story, novel or narrative poem that interrupts the present action of the plot to flash-backward and tell what happened at an earlier time.
Hyperbole:
Figure or speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion or to create comic effect; extreme exaggeration (You’re killing me with your sarcasm!)
Allusion:
reference to a statement, a person, a place, or an event from literature, history, religion…
(Between a rock and hard place is an allusion to The Odyssey…So is “the lesser of two evils”)
Foil
character who is used to contrast another character.
Homeric simile:
an extended comparison between something that the audience cannot have seen
(such as Odysseus poking out the Cyclops’) and something ordinary that they would have been familiar with (such as a shipbuilder drilling a plank)
Dramatic Irony:
occurs when the audience knows something important that a character in the play or story does not know.
Episodic:
A series of related events in the course of a continuous
account
