AP English III Rhetorical Terms Quiz
Form: Red Fish
**** This quiz is part of a class set. Please do NOT write on it! ****
Part One: Match the rhetorical devices used in the examples below with the correct terms from the answer
box. For clarity, some portions of the sentences have been underlined to indicate which device is meant.
Answer options may be used once, more than once, or not at all.
1. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life
spent defending something. You use them as a punch line.—A Few Good Men
2. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it
was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was
the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter
of despair […]—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
3. My tongue is a dolphin passed out in an elevator.—Jeffrey McDaniel, “Dear America”
4. And up in the nursery, an absurd little bird is popping out to say “Cuckoo!”— The Sound of
Music
5. Many mumbling mice are making midnight music in the moonlight. —Dr. Seuss
a. alliteration
b. consonance
c. assonance
d. simile
e. metaphor
ab. synecdoche
ac. metonymy
ad. asyndeton
ae. polysyndeton
bc. oxymoron
bd. anaphora
be. epistrophe
cd. onomatopoeia
ce. hyperbole
de. euphemism
6. Instead of his promises, the only remedy that Mr. Roosevelt has described is to borrow more
money if he can, and to go further into debt. And with it all there stalks a slimy specter of
want, hunger, destitution, and pestilence. —Huey P. Long, “Address to Senate Staffers”
7. Um, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here. What’s the use of thunder? Um, um, um. We don’t
want thunder; we want rum; give us a glass of rum. Um, um, um!—Herman Melville, Moby Dick
8. Let us go then, you and I,
While the evening is spread out against the sky,
Like a patient etherized upon a table—T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
9. In 1931, ten years ago, Japan invaded Manchukuo—without warning. In 1935, Italy invaded
Ethiopia—without warning. In 1938, Hitler occupied Austria—without warning. In 1939, Hitler invaded
Czechoslovakia—without warning. Later in 1939, Hitler invaded Poland—without warning. And now Japan has
attacked Malaya and Thailand—and the United States—without warning.—Franklin D. Roosevelt
10. The building was pretty ugly and a little big for its surroundings.—John Steinbeck
11. The IRS is auditing me? Great. All I need is a couple of suits arriving at my door.
12. Then suddenly fire burst from the Meneltarma, and there came a mighty wind and a tumult of the earth, and the
sky reeled, and the hills slid, and Númenor went down into the sea, with all its children and its wives and its
maidens and its ladies proud; and all its gardens and its halls and its towers, its tombs and its riches, and its
jewels and its webs and its things painted and carven, and its laughter and its mirth and its music, its wisdom
and its lore; they vanished forever.—J.R.R.Tolkien
13. She's safe, just like I promised. She's all set to marry Norrington, just like she promised. And
you get to die for her, just like you promised. —Pirates of the Caribbean
14. I’m not short. I’m vertically challenged.
15. What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young.—George Bernard Shaw
16. They say he’s closed the eyes of many a man and opened the eyes of many a woman.
17. I had to wait in the station for ten days–an eternity.—Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
18. There are so many mouths to feed in this family!
19. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war—not history’s forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor
the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government— not any other
thing. We are the killers.—The Lion in Winter
a. alliteration
b. consonance
c. assonance
d. simile
e. metaphor
ab. synecdoche
ac. metonymy
ad. parallel
structure
ae. polysyndeton
bc. paradox
bd. oxymoron
be. epistrophe
cd. onomatopoeia
ce. hyperbole
de. euphemism
20. We have seen the state of our Union in the endurance of rescuers, working past exhaustion. We’ve seen the
unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers— in English, Hebrew, and
Arabic.—George W. Bush, “9/20/01 Address to the Nation on Terrorism”
Part Two: Match the rhetorical devices discussed in the examples below with the correct terms. Answers may be
used once, more than once, or not at all.
A. ethos
B. pathos
C. logos
21. A brilliant young woman I know was asked once to support her argument in favor of social welfare. She named
the most powerful source imaginable: the look in a mother's face when she cannot feed her children. Can you look
that hungry child in the eyes? See the blood on his feet from working barefoot in the cotton fields. Or do you ask
his baby sister with her belly swollen from hunger if she cares about her daddy's work ethics? —The Great
Debaters
22. When Descartes said, “I think; therefore, I am,” his statement reflected the kind of thought and being he believed to
be most real. He did not claim, as Pascal would later do, that our being has as much to do with feeling as it does
thinking. Descartes here equates pure rationality and pure being, persuading us of the accuracy of this equation by
the simplicity of his statement.
23. In Cicero’s speech defending the poet Archias, he begins his speech by referring to his own expertise in oratory, for
which he was famous in Rome. While lacking modesty, this tactic was still effective because the audience was
forced to acknowledge that Cicero’s public service gave him a certain right to speak, and his success in oratory gave
him special authority to speak about another author. In effect, his entire speech is an attempt to increase the
respectability of literature, largely accomplished by tying it to Cicero’'s own, already established, public character.
24. Antony, addressing the crowd after Caesar’s murder in Shakespeare’s play, manages to stir them up to anger against
the conspirators by drawing upon their pity. He does this by calling their attention to each of Caesar’s dagger
wounds, and by using vivid descriptions combined with allusions to the betrayal of friendship made by Brutus, who
made “the most unkindest cut of all.”
Part Three: Below are two sentences that differ only in respect to diction OR syntax. Identify which aspect of the
original sentence has changed.
A. syntax
B. diction
25. Rain rattled against the windowpane like bullets.
Rain clattered against the windowpane like applause.
Answers:
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asyndeton
anaphora
metaphor
onomatopoeia
alliteration
consonance
assonance
simile
epistrophe
oxymoron
metonymy
polysyndeton
epistrophe
euphemism
paradox
parallel structure
hyperbole
synecdoche
polysyndeton
parallel structure
pathos
logos
ethos
pathos
diction