Vocabulary Quiz #1

Question 1

abbess:

Answer 1

the head of a convent or a monastery for women

Question 2

abbot:

Answer 2

the head of a monastery

Question 3

absolutism:

Answer 3

a form of government in which the sovereign power or ultimate authority rested in the hands of a monarch who claimed to rule by divine right and was therefore responsible only to God

Question 4

Abstract Expressionism:

Answer 4

a post-World War II artistic movement that broke with all conventions of form and structure in favour of total abstraction

Question 5

abstract painting:

Answer 5

an artistic movement that developed early in the twentieth century in which artists focused on colour to avoid any references to visual reality

Question 6

aediles:

Answer 6

Roman officials who supervised the public games and the grain supply of the city of Rome

Question 7

agricultural revolution:

Answer 7

the application of new agricultural techniques that allowed for a large increase in productivity in the eighteenth century

Question 8

Agricultural (Neolithic) Revolution:

Answer 8

a shift from hunting animals and gathering plants for sustenance to producing food by systematic agricultural that occurred gradually between 10,000 and 4,000 B.C.E (the Neolithic or “New Stone” Age).

Question 9

anarchism:

Answer 9

a political theory that holds that all governments and existing social institutions are unnecessary and advocates a society based on voluntary cooperation

Question 10

anticlericalism:

Answer 10

opposition to the power of the clergy, especially in political affairs

Question 11

anti-Semitism:

Answer 11

hostility toward or discrimination against Jews

Question 12

apartheid:

Answer 12

the system of racial segregation practiced in the Republic of South Africa until the 1990s, which involved political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites

Question 13

appeasement:

Answer 13

the policy, followed by the European nations in the 1930s, of accepting Hitler’s annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the belief that meeting his demands would assure peace and stability

Question 14

Arianism:

Answer 14

a Christian heresy that taught that Jesus was inferior to God. Though condemned by the Council of Nicaea in 325, Arianism was adopted by many of the Germanic peoples who entered the Roman Empire over the next centuries

Question 15

aristocracy:

Answer 15

a class of hereditary nobility in medieval Europe; a warrior class who shared a distinctive lifestyle based on the institution of knighthood, although there were social divisions within the group based on extremes of wealth

Question 16

audiencias:

Answer 16

advisory groups to viceroys in Spanish America

Question 17

Ausgleich:

Answer 17

the “Compromise” of 1867 that created the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Austria and Hungary each had its own capital, constitution, and legislative assembly but were united under one monarch

Question 18

authoritarian state:

Answer 18

a state that has a dictatorial government and some other trappings of a totalitarian state but does not demand that the masses be actively involved in the regime’s goals as totalitarian states do

Question 19

auxiliaries:

Answer 19

troops enlisted from the subject peoples of the Roman Empire to supplement the regular legions composed of Roman citizens

Question 20

balance of power:

Answer 20

a distribution of power among several states such that no single nation can dominate or interfere with the interests of another

Question 21

Baroque:

Answer 21

an artistic movement of the seventeenth century in Europe that used dramatic effects to arouse the emotions and reflected the search for power that was a large part of the seventeenth-century ethos

Question 22

bicameral legislature:

Answer 22

a legislature with two houses

Question 23

Black Death:

Answer 23

the outbreak of plague (mostly bubonic) in the mid-fourteenth century that killed from 25 to 50 percent of Europe’s population

Question 24

blitzkrieg:

Answer 24

“the lightning war”. A war conducted with great speed and force, as in Germany’s advance a the beginning of World War II

Question 25

Bolsheviks:

Answer 25

a small faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party who were led by Lenin and dedicated to violent revolution. They seized power in Russia in 1917 and were subsequently renamed the Communists

Question 26

bourgeoisie (burghers):

Answer 26

inhabitants (merchants and artisans) of boroughs and burghs (towns)

Question 27

boyars:

Answer 27

the Russian nobility

Question 28

Brezhnev Doctrine:

Answer 28

the doctrine, enunciated by Leonid Brezhnev, that the Soviet Union had a right to intervene if socialism was threatened in another socialist state; used to justify moving Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968

Question 29

Burschenschaften:

Answer 29

student societies in the German states dedicated to fostering the goal of a free, united Germany

Question 30

caliph:

Answer 30

the secular leader of the Islamic community

Question 31

capital:

Answer 31

material wealth used or available for use in the production of more wealth

Question 32

capitalism:

Answer 32

beginning the the Middle Ages, an economic system in which people invested trade and goods to make profits

Question 33

cartel:

Answer 33

a combination of independent commercial enterprises that work together to control prices and limit competition

Question 34

Cartesian dualism:

Answer 34

Descartes’s principle of the separation of mine and matter (mind and body) that enabled scientists to view matter as something separate from themselves that could be investigated by reason

Question 35

Catholic Reformation:

Answer 35

the movement for the reform of the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. It included a revived papacy; the regeneration of old religious orders and the founding of new ones, most notably the Jesuits; and the reaffirmation of traditional Catholic doctrine at the Council of Trent

Question 36

celibacy:

Answer 36

complete abstinence from sexual activity. Many early Christians viewed celibacy as the surest way to holiness

Question 37

centuriate assembly:

Answer 37

the chief popular assembly of the Roman Republic. It passed laws and elected the chief magistrates

Question 38

chansons de geste:

Answer 38

a form of vernacular literature in the High Middle Ages that consisted of heroic epics focusing on the deeds of warriors

Question 39

chivalry:

Answer 39

the ideal of civilized behaviour that emerged among the nobility in the eleventh and twelfth centuries under the influence of the church; a code of ethics that knights were expected to uphold

Question 40

cholera:

Answer 40

a serious and often deadly disease commonly spread by contaminated water; a major problem in nineteenth-century European cities before sewerage systems were installed

Question 41

Christian (northern) humanism:

Answer 41

an intellectual movement in northern Europe in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that combined the interest in the classics of the Italian Renaissance with an interest in the sources of early Christianity, including the New Testament and the writings of the church fathers

Question 42

civic humanism:

Answer 42

an intellectual movement of the Italian Renaissance that saw Cicero, who was both an intellectual and a statesman as the ideal and held that humanists should be involved in government and use their rhetorical training in the service of the state

Question 43

civil disobedience:

Answer 43

a policy of peaceful protest against laws or government policies in order to achieve political change