Terms : Hide Images
| 5299518069 | aphorism | a brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life (example: "To err is human, to forgive divine." from Pope, An Essay on Criticism) | 0 | |
| 5299518070 | caricature | a representation in which the subject's distinctive features or peculiarities are deliberately exaggerated for comic effect (example: "Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man, with a fat smile, and a general appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. ... Mr. Chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright" from Dickens) | 1 | |
| 5299518071 | doppelganger | a ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts its fleshly counterpart (example: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Hyde is an evil double of the honorable Dr. Jekyll - "man is not truly one, but truly two" from Robert Louis Stephenson) | 2 | |
| 5299518072 | hubris | excessive pride or arrogance that results in the downfall of the protagonist of a tragedy (example: "Victor" the protagonist of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein exhibits Hubris in his endeavor to become an unmatched scientist) | 3 | |
| 5299518073 | pastiche | a literary piece that imitates another famous literary work and often a wide mixture of items such as themes, concepts and characters imitated from different literary works; unlike parody, its purpose is not to mock but to honor the literary piece it imitates (example: "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" is a tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard that develops upon two minor characters that appear for a brief moment in Shakespeare's Hamlet) | 4 | |
| 5299518074 | deus ex machina | an unrealistic or unexpected intervention to rescue the protagonists or resolve the conflict; means "the god out of the machine" and refers to stage machinery in Greek plays used to lower actors or statues playing a god onto the stage to set things right (example: In Homer's Odyssey, after Odysseus slaughters a group of people, their families show up seeking revenge; as a battle is about to begin, Athena appears in the last few lines of the poem and tells both sides to stop.) | 5 | |
| 5299518075 | pun | a play on words in which a humorous effect is produced by using a word that suggests two or more meanings or by exploiting similarly sounding words having different meanings (example: Romeo: "You have dancing shoes with nimble soles; I have a soul of lead" from Romeo and Juliet / "I always told you, Gwendolyn, my name was Ernest, didn't I? Well, it is Ernest after all. I mean it naturally is Ernest" from Oscar Wilde) | 6 | |
| 5299518076 | pleonasm | use of redundant words in order to enrich a thought; it is a tautology but a useful one; it is the opposite of an oxymoron (examples: "This was the most unkindest cut of all" from Julius Caesar / "These terrible things I have seen with my own eyes" from Isabel Allende) | 7 | |
| 5299518077 | portmanteau | a term where two or more words are joined together to coin a new word (examples: "sinduced" is from "sin" and "seduced," from Joyce / Mr. Murdstone is from "murderer" and "stone," from Dickens) | 8 | |
| 5299518078 | snark | a combination of two words; "snide" and "remark," which means a sarcastic comment; it is a literary device which is meant to be a sarcastic speech (Friends, countrymen, lend me your ears. / I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him / Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest- / For Brutus is an honorable man" from Julius Caesar) | 9 |
