Review Quiz: Rhetorical Terms

This quiz should help you to understand, distinguish, and remember many of the figures of speech in our Tool Kit for Rhetorical Analysis. For each quotation below, choose the one figure or rhetorical concept that is most clearly illustrated by the short passage. (To review a definition, simply click on the term to visit the glossary.) When you're done, compare your answers with those at the bottom of the page.

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1. They went home and told their wives,
   that never once in all their lives,
   had they known a girl like me,
   But . . . They went home.
   (Maya Angelou, "They Went Home")
   (a) syllepsis
   (b) ellipsis
   (c) apostrophe
   (d) ecphonesis


2. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.
   (Sir Winston Churchill)
   (a) anaphora
   (b) parenthesis
   (c) syllepsis
   (d) ellipsis


3. You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of colligenous junk.
   (The Wizard of Oz)
   (a) apophasis
   (b) litotes
   (c) anaphora
   (d) alliteration


4. He snatched his coat from the hook by the door and a kiss from the lips of his wife.
   (a) alliteration
   (b) asyndeton
   (c) aporia
   (d) syllepsis


5. All that we see or seem
   Is but a dream within a dream.
   (Edgar Allan Poe)
   (a) aporia
   (b) diacope
   (c) distinctio
   (d) litotes


6. I won't mention your past indiscretions, the DUI charges or your problems with drugs, because I want to focus on the trouble that your recent behavior has caused.
   (a) chiasmus
   (b) antimetabole
   (c) distinctio
   (d) apophasis


7. Some editors and teachers believe that bdelygmia has no place in formal prose, but you must use your own judgment. After all, ineffectively used--well, just consider yourself warned.
   (a) aposiopesis
   (b) identification
   (c) ethopoeia
   (d) antimetabole


8. Several well-respected scientists have described the process as a simple one. If by "simple" they mean easy to explain, they are correct. But if they mean instead that the procedure is easy to carry out, they are gravely mistaken.
   (a) ethopoeia
   (b) distinctio
   (c) euphuism
   (d) euphemism


9. What's at issue is not what more time can do for you, it is what you can do with more time.
   (a) connotation
   (b) dysphemism
   (c) chiasmus
   (d) apostrophe


10. When someone is impatient and says, "I haven't got all day," I always wonder, how can that be? How can you not have all day?
    (George Carlin)
    (a) epicrisis
    (b) epexegesis
    (c) parenthesis
    (d) epideictic


11. Yesterday upon the stair
    I met a man who wasn't there.
    He wasn't there again today
    Oh how I wish he'd go away.
    (Hughes Mearns)
    (a) anadiplosis
    (b) antirrhesis
    (c) antonomasia
    (d) bdelygmia


12. Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
    (Mark Twain)
    (a) apophasis
    (b) antirrhesis
    (c) apostrophe
    (d) antithesis

Answers

1. (b) ellipsis
2. (a) anaphora
   
3. (d) alliteration
4. (d) syllepsis
5. (b) diacope
6. (d) apophasis
7. (a) aposiopesis
8. (b) distinctio
9. (c) chiasmus
   
10. (a) epicrisis
    
11. (a) anadiplosis
    
12. (d) antithesis

Further Review:

• Review Quiz: Top 20 Figures of Speech
• Quiz on Figures of Speech in Advertising Slogans