AP English Allusions Lecture Notes

A comprehensive collection of mythological, literary, biblical, and historical allusions used in AP English as defined in lecture notes.

Achilles' heel

today, one spot that is most vulnerable; one weakness a person may have. Achilles was invulnerable except for his heel (achilles tendon).

Adonis

handsome young man; Aphrodite loved him.

Aeolian

anything pertaining to wind; god who was Keeper of Wind

Apollo

a physically perfect male; the God of music and light; known for his physical beauty

Argus-eyed

omniscient, all-seeing; from Argus, the $100$-eyed monster that Hera had guarding Io

Athena/Minerva

goddess of wisdom, the city, and arts; patron goddess of the city of Athens

Atlantean

strong like Atlas –who carried the globe (world) on his shoulders

Aurora

early morning or sunrise; from the Roman personification of Dawn or Eos

Bacchanal

n; wild, drunken party or rowdy celebration; from god of wine Bacchus

Bacchanalian

adj.; pertaining to a wild, drunken party or celebration from god of wine, Bacchus (Roman), Dionysus (Greek)

Calliope

series of whistles --circus organ ; from the Muse of eloquence or beautiful voice

Cassandra

a person who continually predicts misfortune but often is not believed; from (Greek legends) a daughter of Priam cursed by Apollo for not returning his love; he left her with the gift of prophecy but made it so no one would believe her

Centaur

a monster that had the head, arms, and chest of a man, and the body and legs of a horse

Chimera

a horrible creature of the imagination, an absurd or impossible idea; wild fancy; a monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail, supposed to breathe out fire

Cupidity

eager "desire" to possess something; greed or avarice; Roman god of love (Greek name is Eros)

Erotic

of or having to do with sexual passion or love; Greek god of love, Eros

Furor

(Latin- furere to rage) wild enthusiasm or excitement, rage; fury, "run like fury"; any one of the three Furies

Gorgon

a very ugly or terrible person, especially a repulsive woman.; Medusa, any one or three sisters have snakes for hair and faces so horrible that anyone who looked at them turned to stone

Halcyon

clam, peaceful, tranquil --Archaic bird supposed to breed in a nest on the sea and calm the water, identified with the kingfisher (Latin< Greek halkyon)

Harpy

a predatory person or nagging woman; from harpy, a foul creature that was part woman, part bird

Hector

to bully; from Hector, the son of Priam (king of Troy), and the bravest Trojan warrior. Killed Achilles' friend Patroclus.

Helen (of Troy)

Hellenistic; of or relating to Greece, or a Specialist of language or culture in Greece; symbol of a beautiful woman; from Helen of Troy, the daughter of Leda and Zeus—the cause of the Trojan War.

Herculean

very strong or of extraordinary power; from Hercules, Hera's glory, the son of Zeus. He performed the $12$ labors imposed by Hera.

Hydra-Headed

having many centers or branches, hard to bring under control; something bad you cannot eradicate; from Hydra, the $9$-headed serpent that was sacred to Hera. Hercules killed him in one of the $12$ labors.

Iridescent

a play of colors producing rainbow effects; from Iris, goddess of the rainbow

Jovial

good humored; from the word Jove, used to express surprise or agreement (Jupiter)

Junoesque

marked by stately beauty; comes from the word Juno, the wife of Jupiter, the Goddess of light, birth, women, and marriage

Lethargy

n., abnormal drowsiness or inertia; from the word Lethe, a river in Hades that caused drinkers to forget their past

Martial

suited for war or a warrior; from Mars, the Roman God of War

Medea

sorceress or enchantress; from Medea who helped Jason and the Argonauts capture the Golden Fleece; known for her revenge against Jason when he spurned her for the princess of Corinth

Mentor

a trusted counselor or guide; from Mentor, a friend of Odysseus' son, who was entrusted with his education

Mercurial

adj., suddenly cranky or changeable; Roman Mythology, of or relating to the god Mercury

Mercury/Hermes

a carrier or tidings, a newsboy, a messenger; messenger of the gods, conductor of souls to the lower world, and god of eloquence; the fabled inventor, wore winged hat and sandals

Mnemonics

a device used to aid memory; the personification of memory, Mnemosyne., who gave birth to the nine Muses, who supposedly gave good memory in story telling.

Morphine

a bitter white, crystalline alkaloid used to relieve pain and induce sleep; Morpheus was a god that could easily change form or shape

Muse

some creature of inspiration ; the daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, divine singers that presided over thought in all its forms

Narcissism

being in love with our own self-image; named for Narcissus, a handsome young man who despised love. Echo, a nymph who was in love with him, was rejected and decreed, "Let he who loves not others, love himself." Hearing this, he fell in love with his image, while gazing in a pond, and drowned himself trying to capture it.

Nemesis

just punishment, one who inflicts due punishment; goddess who punishes crime; but more often she is the power charged with curbing all excess, such as excessive good fortune or arrogant pride.

Neptune

the sea personified; the Roman god associated with Poseidon, god of the water and oceans.

Niobe

mournful woman; from Niobe, whose children were slain by Apollo and Artemis because of her bragging; the gods pitied her and turned her into a rock that was always wet from weeping

Odyssey

a long journey; named for Odysseus, the character in The Odyssey, by Homer. Odysseus makes his long journey back from the Trojan War, encountering several obstacles along the way.

Olympian

majestic in manner, superior to mundane affairs; any participant in the ancient or modern Olympic games; named after $12$ gods that were supposed to reside on Mt. Olympus.

Paean

a song of joy; a ritual epithet of Apollo the healer. In Homeric poems, an independent god of healing named Paean or Paeon, who took care of Hades when the latter was wounded.

Pandora's Box

Something that opens the door for bad occurrences, opened by someone known for curiosity; named for Pandora who was the first mortal, sent by Zeus, to punish man for Prometheus’ theft of fire. For her curiosity in opening the box, Zeus gave her all human ills in the world, leaving only hope at the bottom.

Parnassus

Mountain was sacred to arts and literature; any center of poetic or artistic activity; .poetry or poets collectively, a common title for selection of poetry; named after the hero of Mt. Parnassus, the son of Poseidon and a Nymph. He founded the oracle of Python, which was later occupied by Apollo.

Pegasus

Poetic inspiration; named after a winged horse which sprang from the blood of Medusa at her death; a stamp of his hoof caused Hippocrene, the fountain of the Muses, to issue poetic inspiration from Mount Helicon.

Phoenix

a symbol of immortality or rebirth; named after the Egyptian Mythology phoenix, a long bird which lived in the Arabian desert and then consumed itself in fire, rising renewed from the flame to start another long life.

Plutocracy

a government by the wealthy; named after Pluton, the "Rich Man," a ritual tile of Hades. He was originally the god of the fields because the ground was the source of all wealth, ores and jewels.

Promethean

life-bringing, creative, or courageously original; named after a Titan who brought man the use of fire which he had stolen from heaven for their benefit.

Protean

taking many forms, versatile; named after Proteus, a god of the sea, charged with tending the flocks of the sea creatures belonging to Poseidon. He had the ability to change himself into whatever form he desired, using this power particularly when he wanted to elude those asking him questions.

Psyche

the human soul, self, the mind; named after Psyche, a maiden who, after undergoing many hardships due to Aphrodite’s jealousy, reunited with Cupid and was made immortal by Jupiter; she personifies the soul joined to the heart of love.

Pygmalion

someone (usually a male) who tries to fashion someone into the person he desires; from a myth adapted into a play by George Bernard Shaw; a woman- hating sculptor who makes a female figure of ivory who Aphrodite brings to life for him.

Pyrrhic victory

adj.; a too costly victory; from Pyrrhus, a Greek king who defeated the Romans in $279 ext{ BC}$, but suffered extremely heavy losses in the fight

Saturnalia

a period of unrestrained revelry; named after the ancient Roman festival of Saturn, with general feasting in revelry in honor of the winter solstice.

Saturnine

sluggish, gloomy, morose, inactive in winter months; named after the god Saturn, often associated with the god of the Underworld.

Sibyl

a witch or sorceress; a priestess who made known the oracles of Apollo and possessed the gift of prophecy.

Sisyphean

greedy and avaricious; from the shrewd and greedy king of Corinth, Sisyphus, who was doomed forever in Hades to roll uphill a heavy stone, which always rolled down again.

Stentorian

having a loud voice; after Stentor, a character in the Iliad who could shout as loudly as $50$ men. He engaged in a shouting match against Hermes and was put to death after losing.

Stygian

dark and gloomy; named after the river Styx, a river in the Underworld. The water is poisonous for human and cattle and said to break iron, metal and pottery, though it is said a horse's hoof is unharmed by it.

Tantalize

from King Tantalus, who reigned on Mt. Sipylus and was condemned to reside in a beautiful river with sumptuous fruits just out of reach and the water undrinkable, always tempting him as punishment for excessive pride (he boiled his son and fed the broth to trick the gods).

Terpsichorean

pertaining to dance; for Terpsichore, one of the nine muses, sometimes said to be the mother of the sirens and the protector of dance.

Titanic

large, grand, enormous; after Tityus, a giant, the son of Zeus and Elara. His body covers over $2$ acres. Or after the Titans, the offspring of Chronus and Rhea, who went to war against Zeus and the other Olympian gods.

Volcanoes

originated from Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, whose forge is said to be under mountains

Vulcanize

to treat rubber with sulfur to increase strength and elasticity ; from the Roman God of Fore and Metallurgy, Vulcan/Hephaestus

Zeus

a powerful man; king of the gods, ruler of Mt. Olympus, vengeful hurler of thunderbolts

Babbitt

a self-satisfied person concerned chiefly with business and middle-class ideals like material success; a member of the American working class whose unthinking attachment to its business and social ideals is such to make him a model of narrow-mindedness and self-satisfaction ; after George F. Babbitt, the main character in the novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

Brobdingnagian

gigantic, enormous, on a large scale, enlarged ; after Brobdingnag, the land of giants visited by Gullivar in Gullivar's Travels, by Jonathan Swift

Bumble

to speak or behave clumsily or faltering, to make a humming or droning sound; Middle English bomblem; a clumsy religious figure (a beadle) in a work of literature

Cinderella

one who gains affluence or recognition after obscurity and neglect, a person or thing whose beauty or worth remains unrecognized; after the fairy-tale heroine who escapes form a life of drudgery through the intervention of a fairy godmother and marries a handsome prince

Don Juan

a libertine, profligate, a man obsessed with seducing women ; after Don Juan, the legendary $14^{ ext{th}}$ century Spanish nobleman and libertine

Don Quixote

someone overly idealistic to the point of having impossible dreams; from the crazed and impoverished Spanish noble who sets out to revive the glory of knighthood, romanticized in the musical The Man of La Mancha based on the story by Cervantes

Panglossian

blindly or misleadingly optimistic; after Dr. Pangloss in Candide by Voltaire, a pedantic old tutor

Falstaffian

full of wit and bawdy humor; after Falstaff, a fat, sensual, boastful, and mendacious knight who was the companion of Henry, Prince of Wales

Frankenstein

Anything that threatens or destroys its creator; from.the young scientist in Mary Shelley's novel of this name, who creates a monster that eventually destroys him

Friday

A faithful and willing attendant, ready to turn his hand to anything; from the young savage found by Robinson Crusoe on a Friday, and kept as his servant and companion on the desert island

Galahad

A pure and noble man with limited ambition; in the legends of King Arthur, the purest and most virtuous knight of the Round Table, the only knight to find the Holy Grail

Jekyll and Hyde

A capricious person with two sides to his/her personality; from a character in the famous novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde who had more than one personality, a split personality (one good and one evil)

Lilliputian

descriptive of a very small person or of something diminutive, trivial or petty; after the Lilliputians, tiny people in Gullivar's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Little Lord Fauntleroy

refers either to a certain type of children's clothing or to a beautiful, but pampered and effeminate small boy; from a work by Frances H. Burnett, the main character, $7$-year-old Cedric Errol, was a striking figure, dressed in black velvet with a lace collar and yellow curls

Lothario

used to describe a man whose chief interest is seducing a woman; from the play The Fair Penitent by Nicholas Rowe, the main character and the seducer

Malapropism

The usually unintentional humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase, especially the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended, but ludicrously wrong in context - Example: polo bears. Mrs. Malaprop was a character noted for her misuse of words in R. B. Sheridan's comedy The Rivals

Milquetoast

a timid, weak, or unassertive person; from Casper Milquetoast, who was a comic strip character created by H.T. Webster

Pickwickian

humorous, sometimes derogatory; from Samuel Pickwick, a character in Charles Dickens' Pickwickian Papers

Pollyanna

a person characterized by impermissible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything, a foolishly or blindly optimistic person; from Eleanor Porter's heroine, Pollyanna Whittier, in the book Pollyanna

Pooh-bah

a pompous, ostentatious official, especially one who, holding many offices, fulfills none of them, a person who holds high office ; after Pooh-Bah Lord-High-Everything-Else, character in The Mikado, a musical by Gilbert and Sullivan

Quixotic

having foolish and impractical ideas of honor, or schemes for the general good; after Don Quixote, a half-crazy reformer and knight of the supposed distressed, in a novel by the same name

Robot

a machine that looks like a human being and performs various acts of a human being, a similar but functional machine whose lack of capacity for human emotions is often emphasized by an efficient, insensitive person who functions automatically, a mechanism guided by controls from Karel Capek's Rossum's Universal Robots ($1920$), taken from the Czech "robota," meaning drudgery

Rodomontade

bluster and boasting, to boast (rodomontading or rodomontaded); from Rodomont, a brave, but braggart knight in Bojardo's Orlando Inamorato; King of Sarza or Algiers, son of Ulteus, and commander of both horse and foot n the Saracen Army

Scrooge

a bitter and/or greedy person; from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, an elderly stingy miser who is given a reality check by $3$ visiting ghosts

Simon Legree

a harsh, cruel, or demanding person in authority, such as an employer or officer that acts in this manner ; from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Ward, the brutal slave overseer

Svengali

a person with an irresistible hypnotic power ; from a person in a novel written in $1894$ by George Mauriers; a musician who hypnotizes and gains control over the heroine

Tartuffe

hypocrite or someone who is hypocritical; central character in a comedy by Moliere produced in $1667$; Moliere was famous for his hypocritical piety

Uncle Tom

someone thought to have the timid service attitude like that of a slave to his owner; from the humble, pious, long-suffering Negro slave in Uncle Tom's Cabin by abolitionist writer Stowe

Uriah Heep

a fawning toadie, an obsequious person; from a character in Charles Dickens' David Copperfield ($1849$-$1850$);

Walter Mitty

a commonplace non-adventuresome person who seeks escape from reality through Daydreaming, a henpecked husband or dreamer; after a daydreaming henpecked “hero” in a story by James Thurber

Yahoo

a boorish, crass, or stupid person; from a member of a race of brutes in Swift's Gulliver's Travels who have the form and all the vices of humans

Absolom

a son who brings heartache to his father; from the third son of David, King of Israel. Exiled for three years before he was allowed to return to the court or see his royal father, Absolom plotted to cause a rebellion against his father to overtake the kingdom because he heard Solomon was to succeed David. When Absolom was killed in battle, King David grieved for his son in spite of his treachery against him

Alpha and Omega

The beginning and the end, from a quote in Revelations in the New Testament

Cain

a brother who kills a brother; from the story of Adam and Eve’s son Cain, who killed his brother Abel out of jealousy

Daniel

one known for wisdom and accurate judgment; from a wise leader in the Old Testament who was able to read the handwriting on the wall