Comprehensive AP English Allusions: Mythological, Literary, Biblical, and Historical References

Furor

Wild enthusiasm or excitement; rage; fury.

Achilles' heel

One spot that is most vulnerable; one weakness a person may have.

Adonis

Handsome young man; Aphrodite loved him.

Gorgon

A very ugly or terrible person, especially a repulsive woman.

Aeolian

Anything pertaining to wind; god who was Keeper of Wind.

Apollo

The God of music and light; known for his physical beauty.

Halcyon

Calm, peaceful, tranquil; archaic bird supposed to breed in a nest on the sea.

Argus-eyed

Omniscient, all-seeing; from Argus, the 100-eyed monster.

Harpy

A predatory person or nagging woman.

Athena/Minerva

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

Hector

To bully; from Hector, the bravest Trojan warrior.

Atlantean

Strong like Atlas, who carried the globe on his shoulders.

Aurora

Early morning or sunrise; from the Roman personification of Dawn.

Helen (of Troy)

Symbol of a beautiful woman; cause of the Trojan War.

Bacchanal

Wild, drunken party or rowdy celebration; from god of wine Bacchus.

Herculean

Very strong or of extraordinary power; from Hercules.

Bacchanalian

Pertaining to a wild, drunken party or celebration.

Calliope

Series of whistles; from the Muse of eloquence.

Hydra-Headed

Having many centers or branches; hard to bring under control.

Iridescent

A play of colors producing rainbow effects.

Cassandra

A person who continually predicts misfortune but often is not believed.

Jovial

Good humored; from the word Jove.

Centaur

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

Junoesque

Marked by stately beauty; from the word Juno.

Chimera

A horrible creature of the imagination; a monster with a lion's head.

Lethargy

Abnormal drowsiness or inertia; from the word Lethe.

Cupidity

Eager desire to possess something; greed or avarice.

Martial

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

Erotic

Of or having to do with sexual passion or love.

Medea

Sorceress or enchantress; known for her revenge against Jason.

Olympian

Majestic in manner, superior to mundane affairs.

Mentor

A trusted counselor or guide.

Paean

A song of joy; a ritual epithet of Apollo the healer.

Mercurial

Suddenly cranky or changeable; of or relating to the god Mercury.

Mercury/Hermes

Messenger of the gods; god of eloquence.

Pandora's Box

Something that opens the door for bad occurrences.

Mnemonics

A device used to aid memory.

Morphine

A bitter white, crystalline alkaloid used to relieve pain.

Parnassus

Mountain sacred to arts and literature.

Muse

Daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, divine singers.

Pegasus

Poetic inspiration; named after a winged horse.

Phoenix

A symbol of immortality or rebirth.

Narcissism

Being in love with our own self-image.

Plutocracy

A government by the wealthy.

Nemesis

Just punishment; goddess who punishes crime.

Neptune

The sea personified; the Roman god associated with Poseidon.

Promethean

Life-bringing, creative, or courageously original.

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.

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.

Odyssey

A long journey; named for Odysseus, the character in The Odyssey, by Homer.

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.

Vulcanize

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

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.

Zeus

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

Pyrrhic victory

A too costly victory; from Pyrrhus, a Greek king who defeated the Romans in 279 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.

Babbitt

A self-satisfied person concerned chiefly with business and middle-class ideals like material success; after George F. Babbitt, the main character in the novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis.

Sibyl

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

Brobdingnagian

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

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.

Bumble

To speak or behave clumsily or faltering, to make a humming or droning sound; Middle English bomblem.

Stentorian

Having a loud voice; after Stentor, a character in the Iliad who could shout as loudly as 50 men.

Cinderella

One who gains affluence or recognition after obscurity and neglect; after the fairy-tale heroine who escapes from a life of drudgery.

Stygian

Dark and gloomy; named after the river Styx, a river in the Underworld.

Don Juan

A libertine, profligate, a man obsessed with seducing women; after Don Juan, the legendary 14th century Spanish nobleman.

Tantalize

From King Tantalus, who was condemned to reside in a beautiful river with sumptuous fruits just out of reach.

Don Quixote

Someone overly idealistic to the point of having impossible dreams; from the crazed and impoverished Spanish noble.

Panglossian

Blindly or misleadingly optimistic; after Dr. Pangloss in Candide by Voltaire.

Terpsichorean

Pertaining to dance; for Terpsichore, one of the nine muses.

Falstaffian

Full of wit and bawdy humor; after Falstaff, a fat, sensual, boastful knight.

Titanic

Large, grand, enormous; after Tityus, a giant, the son of Zeus and Elara.

Volcanoes

Originated from Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

Frankenstein

Anything that threatens or destroys its creator; from the young scientist in Mary Shelley's novel.

Friday

A faithful and willing attendant; from the young savage found by Robinson Crusoe.

Quixotic

Having foolish and impractical ideas of honor; after Don Quixote.

Robot

A machine that looks like a human being and performs various acts of a human being.

Galahad

A pure and noble man with limited ambition; in the legends of King Arthur.

Jekyll and Hyde

A capricious person with two sides to his/her personality; from a character in the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Lilliputian

Descriptive of a very small person or of something diminutive; after the Lilliputians in Gullivar's Travels.

Rodomontade

Bluster and boasting; from Rodomont, a brave, but braggart knight.

Scrooge

A bitter and/or greedy person; from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Refers either to a certain type of children's clothing or to a beautiful, but pampered small boy.

Cedric Errol

Main character in Burnett's work, a seven-year-old boy dressed in black velvet with a lace collar and yellow curls.

Simon Legree

A harsh, cruel, or demanding person in authority, from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, known as the brutal slave overseer.

Lothario

Used to describe a man whose chief interest is seducing a woman; from the play The Fair Penitent by Nicholas Rowe.

Svengali

A person with an irresistible hypnotic power; from a character in a novel by George Maurier, a musician who hypnotizes the heroine.

Malapropism

The usually unintentional humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase; example: polo bears.

Tartuffe

Hypocrite or someone who is hypocritical; central character in a comedy by Moliere produced in 1667.

Milquetoast

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

Uncle Tom

Someone thought to have a timid service attitude like that of a slave to his owner; from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Stowe.

Pickwickian

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

Uriah Heep

A fawning toadie, an obsequious person; from a character in Charles Dickens' David Copperfield.

Walter Mitty

A commonplace non-adventuresome person who seeks escape from reality.

Pollyanna

A person characterized by impermissible optimism; from Eleanor Porter's heroine, Pollyanna Whittier.

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.

Pooh-bah

A pompous, ostentatious official; from Pooh-Bah, Lord-High-Everything-Else in The Mikado.

Ishmael

One who is cast out as being unworthy; the son of Abraham and Hagar, cast out into the desert.

Jacob

Grandson of Abraham, son of Isaac and Rebekah; his name was changed to Israel.