Vocabulary and Literary Terms: words in context and the language of criticism
Vocabulary and Literary Terms
Two strands share this domain: word knowledge (synonyms, antonyms, idioms, phrasal verbs, one-word substitution, prefixes and suffixes) and the vocabulary of criticism (the names of figures and devices). Both are tested by recognition under time pressure, so revise in pairs and examples rather than in bare lists.
Word knowledge: work in context
- Learn a synonym inside a collocation: heavy rain, strong tea, a deep sleep - "strong rain" is wrong though the dictionary allows "strong".
- Phrasal verbs change meaning with the particle: put off (postpone), put up with (tolerate), put down (suppress), put by (save).
- Confusables worth a mark each: affect/effect, principal/principle, compliment/complement, stationary/stationery, advice/advise.
- Idioms: give the meaning, not a word-by-word gloss - to bite the dust = to fail or die.
Literary terms: definition plus function
- Simile / metaphor: explicit versus implied comparison.
- Metonymy / synecdoche: substitute by association (the crown for monarchy) versus part for whole (hands for workers).
- Irony: verbal (saying the opposite), situational (outcome reverses expectation), dramatic (audience knows more than the character).
- Oxymoron / paradox: two contradictory words versus a statement that seems absurd but proves true.
- Sonnet, ode, elegy, ballad, blank verse, free verse: form names that also predict content - an elegy mourns, a ballad narrates.
Worked example
"The pen is mightier than the sword." Reasoning: pen and sword stand for writing and war by association, not by part-whole, so the trope is metonymy, not synecdoche. The sentence is also an antithesis, and its claim is a commonplace rather than a paradox, because nothing in it is self-contradictory.
Traps
- Naming a device without showing its effect on the meaning of the given line.
- Choosing a synonym whose register or collocation is wrong for the sentence.
- Treating every like as a simile - He works like a machine is one; Like a fool, he agreed is not.