literaryallussions

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. ----, the main character in the novel ---- by Sinclair Lewis

Brobdingnagian

gigantic, enormous, on a large scale, enlarged ; after ----, 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 ---, the legendary 14th 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

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 ----, 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

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, seven-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

Milquetoast

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

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 ----, a half-crazy reformer and knight of the supposed distressed, in a novel by the same name

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

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 (1849-50);

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