VOCABULARY: Quiz VIII Mistakes
Name: ______________________
Mr. Irwin, Honors American Literature A
Directions: The following questions were problematic for many of you on your recent vocabulary quiz. Each phrase
or sentence is provided with the correct answer. To receive partial credit for these questions, explain what can be
found in each phrase or sentence that makes it an example of the provided term. To illustrate, if you were provided
the question “X. colloquialism – Country music gets dumped on quite a bit by people who aren’t fans.” your
response would be, “This sentence illustrates the use of a colloquialism because the phrase ‘dumped on’ is an
informal expression used in conversation to illustrate people speaking against something.”
1. assonance – John met his fate by the lake.
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2. polysendeton – In years gone by, there were in every community men and women who spoke the language of duty
and morality and loyalty and obligation
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3. personification – Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered
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4. ellipsis – Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I go to my friends.
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5. anastrophe – a man forgotten (as opposed to a forgotten man)
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6. asyndeton – One cause, one country, one heart.
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7. parenthesis – Bill – let’s face it – is too young.
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8. antithesis – The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did
here.
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9. simile – The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, burned on the water
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10. apposition – A portrait of Benjamin Disraeli, the famous statesman, hangs in the foyer.
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11. parallelism – Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any
burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty
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12. cliché – There were chills running up and down Larson’s spine.
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13. hyperbole – Oscar has the appetite of a starving lion.
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14. understatement – A scratch, a scratch… ‘tis not so deep as a well, nor as wide as a church-door…
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15. pun – They went and told the sexton and the sexton tolled the bell.
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