3rd Quarter Vocabulary

3rd Quarter Vocabulary

Hamlet

  1. afoot – developing or in the process of happening
  2. assail - violently assault
  3. auspicious - favorable
  4. avouch - affirmation
  5. baseness – the quality of lacking higher values
  6. beshrew - curse
  7. besmirch - soil; tarnish
  8. bestial – brutal without reason; having the attributes of a savage
  9. blastments - injury by a destructive cause
    1. brazen – shameless; insolent; disrespectful
    2. cautel - deceit; falseness
    3. calumnious - slanderous; defamatory
    4. clemency – leniency
    5. consonancy – agreement or harmony
    6. cote - surpass
    7. dexterity – skillful and active
    8. discord – a lack of agreement; strife; tension
    9. dole - sorrow
    10. enmity - a feeling or condition of hostility; hatred; ill will
    11. entreaty – a plea; an earnest request
    12. equivocation – ambiguousness; deliberate evasiveness in wording
    13. fardels - burdens
    14. felicity – happiness or delight
    15. fie – an interjection used to express disgust or disapproval
    16. forbear – refrain
    17. galled – annoyed; irritated
    18. gratis – free
    19. harbinger - foreshadows a future event; an omen
    20. hies – goes quickly; hastens
    21. homage – a reverential regard; respect shown by external action
    22. importing – indicating or signifying
    23. incorporeal – having no material or tangible form
    24. ingenious – cleverness; inventiveness; resourcefulness
    25. interred – deposited a dead body into a grave
    26. jocund - cheerful; merry; blithe
    27. martial – of, related to, or suggesting of war
    28. mote - speck
    29. mutine – rebel (like mutiny)
    30. obstinate – unyielding regardless of reason or logic
    31. ostentation – excessive display
    32. palpable – tangible; perceptible; easily noticeable
    33. parch – to become dry from heat; to shrivel from heat
    34. parle - talk
    35. partisan – a sword
    36. peruse – to read or examine
    37. plausive – manifesting praise or approval
    38. ponderous – very heavy; unwieldy from weight
    39. portentous - ominously significant
    40. prate – to talk idly and foolishly at a great length
    41. precepts - directives; rules
    42. prodigal - giving or yielding profusely
    43. quaintly – in an unusual or old-fashioned manner
    44. quicksilver - the liquid metal mercury
    45. ratify – to give formal approval
    46. relish – to take great pleasure and delight in
    47. requite – to make repayment or to return
    48. retrograde – reverting to an earlier or inferior condition
    49. rouse – to awaken; to become active
    50. sanctify – to set apart for sacred use; to make holy; to purify
    51. scant – barely sufficient
    52. scruple – feeling of doubt regarding morality
    53. sepulcher – tomb cut into rock
    54. sovereign – possessed of controlling power
    55. spurn – to reject or to refuse with hostility
    56. tenable – capable of being maintained in argument; rationally defensible
    57. thews - muscles
    58. usurp - seize by force

Literary Terms

  1. allegory - a story with a moral or political meaning; achieved through symbols or extended metaphor
  2. aside - In a play, a character’s comment that is directed to the audience or another character, but is not heard by any other characters on the stage.
  3. ballad - a simple narrative poem of folk origin, composed in short stanzas and adapted for singing
  4. couplet - a two-line stanza, or the same rhyme pattern in two conjoined lines
  5. dramatic monologue – a poem that dramatizes someone’s thoughts and actions; the persona talks directly to the reader
  6. dramatic irony - when the audience or reader knows something that the characters do not know.
  7. foil - a minor character whose attitude, beliefs, and behavior differ significantly from those of a main character
  8. in media res - beginning in the middle of things
  9. lyric poetry - having the form and musical quality of a song; a songlike outpouring of the poet's thoughts and feelings
    1. octave (or octet) - a stanza of eight lines
    2. ode - a poem that commemorates or celebrates; written for an occasion; classic Odes have three parts
    3. paradox - seemingly contradictory statement that, upon reflection, reveals a truth
    4. quatrain - a stanza of four lines, usually with alternate rhymes
    5. refrain - a repeating line/verse in a song or a poem
    6. sestet - a six-line stanza
    7. situational irony - when the outcome of a situation is the opposite of what was expected
    8. soliloquy - a dramatic device in which a character, alone on a stage (or under the impression of being alone),reveals his or her private thoughts and feelings as if thinking aloud
    9. sonnet - any 14 line poem, may be Shakespearean, Italian or Spenserian based on rhyme scheme
    10. syllogism - form of deductive reasoning in which related and dependent premises lead to a conclusion (e.g., coyness is fine if we have time; we have no time; therefore, let’s do this thing)
    11. tercet - a group of three lines rhyming together or connected by rhyme with the adjacent group or groups of three lines
    12. verbal irony - when a person says one thing while meaning another
    13. villanelle - a 19 line form using only two rhymes and repeating two of the lines according to a set pattern
    14. volta - the turn (shift) of thought or argument

Tone Words

  1. apathetic - showing or feeling no interest, enthusiasm, or concern
  2. brash - self-assertive in a rude, noisy, or overbearing way
  3. droll - curious or unusual in a way that provokes dry amusement
  4. earnest - resulting from or showing sincere and intense conviction
  5. grave - giving cause for alarm; serious
  6. jovial - cheerful and friendly
  7. melancholy - a feeling of pensive sadness
  8. ribald - referring to sexual matters in an amusingly coarse or irreverent way
  9. surly - menacing or threatening in appearance
    1. whimsical - playfully quaint or fanciful, especially in an appealing and amusing way