Babbit
self-satisfied person concerned with material success, usually in the middle class (main character in this novel by Sinclair Lewis)
Brobdingnagian
gicantic (Gullivar’s Travels by Jonathan Swift)
Bumble
to speak or behave clumsily or faltering; to make a humming sound
Captain Ahab
a person who is obsessively pursuing a goal, often their own destruction (Moby-Dick by Herman Melville)
Cinderella
one who gains affluence or recognition after obscurity and neglect; a person or thing whose beauty or worth remains unrecognized
Don Juan
a libertine, profligate, a man obsessed with seducing women (14th century Spanish nobleman)
Dorian Gray
a person who remains youthful while their moralitie dies (The Picture of ______ ____ by Oscar Wilde)
Don Quixote
someone overly idealistic who aims for imposible dreams, crazed (The Man of La Mancha based on the story by Cervantes)
Eponine
someone who is self-sacrificing (Les Misérables by Victor Hugo)
Falstaffian
full of wit and bawdy humor (Shakespeare)
Frankenstein
anything that threatens or destroys its creator (Mary Shelly’s book with this name)
Friday
A faithful and willing attendant
Galahad
a pure and noble man with limited ambition; the most virtous at the round table (legend of King Aurthur)
Gatsby
a wealthy and extravagant individual (Scott Fitzgerald’s book with this name)
Hannibal Lecter
a highly intelligent and sophisitated serial killer (The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris)
Healthcliff
a brooding, dark, and pasisonate lover (Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë)
Hobbit
a small, home-loving creature (The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkein)
Jekyll and Hude
a paricious person with two sides to their personality
Lilliputain
a very small person; trivial, petty (Gullivar’s Travels by Honathan Swift)
Little Lord Fauntleroy
a certain type of children’s clothing; a beautiful but pampered effeminate small boy (by Frances H. Burnett)
Lothario
a man whose chief interest is seducing a woman (The Fair Penitent by Nicholas Rowe)
Machiavellian
a person who is cunning, decietful, and manipulative (The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli)
Malapropism
the usually unintentional humerous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase, especially the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but really wrong in context (The Rivals by R.B. Sheridan)
Milquetoast
a timid, weak, or unassertive person (comic strips by H.T. Webster)
Panglossian
plibdly or misleadingly optimistic (Candide by Voltaire)
Pickwickian
humerous, sometimes deragatory (___________ Papers by Charles Dickens)
Pip
a small, insignificant character (Great Expectations by Charles Dickens)
Pollyanna
a person characterized by impermissible optimism and a tendency to find good in ecerything, a foolishly or blindly optomistic person (Elanor Porter’s book that with the same name after its main character)
Pooh-bah
a pompous, ostentatious official, especially one who, holding many offices, fufills none of them; a person who holds high office (MikadoI by Gilbert and Sullivan)
robot
a machine that looks like a human being and performs various acts of a human heing; a similar but functional machine whose lack of capacity for human emotions is ofteh ephnasized by an efficient, insensitive person who functions autimatically (Karel Capek’s Rossum’s Universal ______)
Rodomontade
bluster and boasting
scout
a young, curious, and innocent observer (To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee)
Scrooge
a bitter and/or greedy person (A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens)
Simon Legree
a harsh, cruel, or demanding person in authority (Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Ward)
Svengali
a person with an irresistible hypnotic power
Tartuffe
a hypocrite (the main character in a comedy by Moliere)
Uncle Tom
someone thought to have the timid attitude like that of a slave to his owner (Stowe’s book that shares this name)
Uriah Heep
a fawning toadie; an obsequious person (David Copperfield by Charles Dickens)
Walter Mitty
a commonplace non-adventuresome person who seeks escape from reality through daydreaming (a “hero”in a story by James Thurber)
Yahoo
a boorish, crass, or stupid person (Gulliver’s Travels by Swift)