50 Fun Facts About High School English

In the novel Frankenstein, which character carries the surname Frankenstein, a name popularly misapplied to another?

The creature's maker, Victor Frankenstein, owns the name; his creation has none, and when a London play billed the part as a row of dashes, Mary Shelley called that way of naming it 'rather good'.

What was the real name of Mark Twain, whose pen name is a riverboat leadsman's cry for two fathoms of water?

Samuel Clemens piloted Mississippi steamboats, where 'mark twain' meant twelve feet of safe water; he said he took the signature over from an old river captain who had signed river reports with it in New Orleans.

In Romeo and Juliet, which character boasts of knowing Juliet's age 'unto an hour'?

The Nurse, once Juliet's wet nurse, works out that she is 13, about two weeks short of fourteen; her father's reply to her suitor Paris is to wait two more summers.

Juliet's 'Wherefore art thou Romeo?' is often misread as asking where he is; what does 'wherefore' mean?

Why is the meaning: Juliet is lamenting that Romeo is a Montague, so her next line begs him to 'deny thy father and refuse thy name'.

In Poe's The Raven, which single word is the bird's reply to every question the grieving speaker asks?

Nevermore is the raven's 'only stock and store', yet the speaker keeps asking questions he knows it will answer the same way, a self-torture Poe built the poem around.

Which verb for wiping out a large part of something began as a Roman army punishment killing one man in ten?

Decimate comes from Latin decimatio, 'destruction of a tenth': as Polybius describes it, a cowardly unit drew lots, every tenth man was clubbed to death by his comrades, and the rest were put on barley rations.

What false name does Odysseus give the Cyclops Polyphemus, so that the blinded giant's calls for help go unanswered?

Nobody is the name, so when Polyphemus roars that Nobody is hurting him, the other Cyclopes assume a god is to blame and advise him to pray.

Whitman's 1865 elegy that opens 'O Captain! my Captain!' mourns which leader without ever naming him?

Abraham Lincoln is the captain: his ship, the Union, has come safely through the Civil War, but he lies 'fallen cold and dead' on its deck while the crowds on shore cheer.

In The Old Man and the Sea, what fish, longer than his skiff, tows Santiago out to sea for two nights?

A marlin, harpooned on the third morning and lashed alongside, is then eaten by sharks on the way home, so Santiago lands only a skeleton from the catch of his life.

Which letter must Hester Prynne wear on her dress in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter?

A, for adultery, outlives her: the tombstone Hester shares with Dimmesdale reads 'On a field, sable, the letter A, gules', heraldry for a red A on black.

In Animal Farm, which carthorse, sure that any problem can be solved by working harder, is sold to a knacker?

Boxer collapses from overwork and is driven off in a knacker's van, which the animals are told a vet had bought and not yet repainted; days later the pigs somehow have money for another case of whisky.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, where does Winston Smith work, rewriting old newspaper reports to fit the Party line?

The Ministry of Truth deals in lies, just as the novel's Ministry of Peace wages war and its Ministry of Love tortures; Winston's job there is to rewrite back issues of The Times.

In The Catcher in the Rye, which word does Holden Caulfield pin on almost everyone, from his prep school to Hollywood?

Phony is Holden's verdict on nearly everyone, even family: he says his older brother D.B., a writer he admires, has prostituted himself by going to Hollywood to write for the movies.

What does the number in the title Fahrenheit 451 refer to, according to Ray Bradbury's title page?

The ignition point of paper is what the title page claims, 'the temperature at which book paper catches fire and burns', though scientists have since measured paper igniting across a range of temperatures.

In The Crucible, which farmer signs a confession, then rips it up rather than let it be made public?

John Proctor refuses to let his three sons be stigmatised by a public confession and is led off to hang, while Parris and Hale beg Elizabeth to talk him round and she refuses.

In Macbeth, who beheads the usurper despite the witches' promise that no man 'of woman born' can harm him?

Macduff slips through the witches' wording because he was delivered by Caesarean section, and he re-enters with Macbeth's severed head as Malcolm restores order.

In Julius Caesar, which conspirator stabs last and is hailed by Antony at the end as 'the noblest Roman of them all'?

Brutus is the one plotter Antony believes acted for Rome, not envy; Caesar's 'Et tu, Brute?' is stagecraft, since Suetonius says he died without a word or, by some reports, with a few words of Greek.

In Beowulf, what is the name of King Hrothgar's great mead hall, which Grendel raids by night?

Heorot, Old English for 'stag', was Hrothgar's pride until Grendel, pained by the sound of its feasting, began killing the warriors who slept there; the hall stood empty at night for twelve years.

In Jane Eyre, what does Mr Rochester keep hidden upstairs at Thornfield Hall, a secret exposed on his wedding day?

His first wife, Bertha Mason, is guarded upstairs by Grace Poole, whose gin now and then lets her slip out, once to set Rochester's bed alight and once to tear Jane's wedding veil.

In The Great Gatsby, what was Jay Gatsby's name at birth, before the boy from North Dakota reinvented himself?

James Gatz, still 'Jimmy' to his father, renamed himself at seventeen; Tom Buchanan later accuses him of building his fortune on grain alcohol sold over the counter in drugstores.

Whose 1845 Narrative tells how his Baltimore mistress taught him the alphabet until her husband forbade it?

Frederick Douglass took Hugh Auld's ban as proof that reading was the way out of slavery, so he traded bread to hungry white boys in the street for lessons and later ran a Sunday school teaching fellow slaves to read.

In The Diary of a Young Girl, what name does Anne Frank give the imaginary friend she addresses her entries to?

Kitty took her name from Kitty Francken, a cheerful character in a Dutch girls' series Anne was reading; Anne began by writing letters to the heroine's whole circle of friends, then kept only Kitty.

Which Robert Frost poem began as a joke on his indecisive walking companion Edward Thomas?

The Road Not Taken was a private joke on Thomas, who dithered over which route to take on their English walks; Frost once warned an audience, 'it's a tricky poem — very tricky'.

In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, what does Oedipus do to himself on learning he has killed his father and married his mother?

He gouges out his eyes with the pins from the dead Jocasta's dress; in Homer's older telling Oedipus stays king of Thebes and neither blinds himself nor goes into exile.

In The Outsiders, which Robert Frost poem does Ponyboy recite to Johnny at a sunrise while the two hide out?

Nothing Gold Can Stay returns at the end: the dying Johnny tells Ponyboy to 'stay gold', and a letter he left in their copy of Gone with the Wind says it again.

In A Streetcar Named Desire, who leaves with the doctor saying 'I have always depended on the kindness of strangers'?

Blanche DuBois fights the matron who pins her arms, then goes quietly once the doctor takes off his hat and speaks to her politely, while the men in the next room go back to their poker game.

In Of Mice and Men, what did Lennie do in Weed that sent him and George fleeing a lynch mob?

He grabbed a woman's skirt to feel the pretty fabric and in his panic would not let go; she cried rape, and the same frightened grip later kills Curley's wife.

In Lord of the Flies, what do Jack's hunters do to their faces as they take to ritual dances and pig hunts?

They paint them: Jack first daubs his face as camouflage for hunting, then finds that the mask frees him from shame, and he dances and snarls behind it.

Which device, from a Greek compound meaning 'name-making', gives us words like 'buzz' that imitate the sounds they name?

Onomatopoeia still depends on the language you imitate in: the same rooster crows 'cock-a-doodle-doo' in English, 'cocorico' in French and 'kikeriki' in German.

Which figure of speech is at work in 'this bag weighs a ton'?

Hyperbole, from the Greek for 'a throwing beyond', is even a legal category: US courts treat obvious rhetorical hyperbole as protected speech rather than defamation.

Which term covers a fire station burning down, an outcome the exact opposite of what was reasonably expected?

Situational irony needs no speaker being ironic; events do it, as in The Wizard of Oz, where the travellers ask a wizard who turns out to be a fraud for brains, a heart and courage they had all along.

Which Greek term did Aristotle's Poetics use for the relief tragedy brings its audience 'through pity and fear'?

Catharsis was a medical word for purging before Aristotle applied it to audiences; in the Politics he credits stirring music with the same effect and says he is using the word unexplained until he writes on poetry.

Which kind of narrator tells Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart', a murderer who keeps insisting on being sane?

Unreliable narrator is the label Wayne C. Booth coined in 1961 for a teller whose word we can't trust; Poe's murderer swears to being calm and sane, then hears the victim's heart beating under the floorboards.

Which device, repeating a phrase at the start of successive sentences, shapes King's 'I have a dream' refrain?

Anaphora drives the eight sentences that open 'I have a dream', a passage missing from King's typed text: he said the phrase, one he had used in earlier speeches, simply came to him at the podium.

Which word for a softened expression like 'passed away' comes from the Greek for 'words of good omen'?

Euphemism joins Greek words for 'good' and 'speech'; the Greeks themselves avoided ill-omened names, calling the dreaded Furies the Eumenides, a flattering title meaning the kindly or gracious ones.

Which point of view do Choose Your Own Adventure books use, casting the reader as the hero of the story?

Second person puts 'you' in the hero's place; the series grew out of bedtime stories in which Edward Packard, stuck for a plot, asked his daughters what the hero should do next.

Which figure of speech is Mercutio's dying 'Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man'?

A pun on 'grave', both solemn and a burial plot: the stabbed Mercutio jokes about his own death, then turns on both families with 'A plague o' both your houses!'

Which figure of speech uses a part for the whole, as in 'wheels' for a car?

Synecdoche names a whole by one of its parts, as in 'fifty head of cattle' or 'ten sail' for ten ships; calling a monarch 'the crown' is metonymy instead, because a crown is no part of its wearer.

What is the running of a sentence past a line break without punctuation called, from the French for 'to stride over'?

Enjambment pulls the reader over the line break to finish the thought, as in the opening of The Waste Land, where 'breeding', 'mixing' and 'stirring' each hang at a line's end.

Which of Aristotle's three modes of persuasion is the appeal to the speaker's own credibility and character?

Ethos, Aristotle wrote, has to come from the speech itself, not from the speaker's reputation before he opens his mouth, and he called character almost the most effective means of persuasion a speaker has.

What is the -ing form of a verb used as a noun, as in 'Playing on computers is fun', called?

A gerund is named from a Latin form meaning 'to be carried out'; the same -ing word is a participle when it describes rather than names, as in 'the boys playing on computers'.

In 'Alice Smith, my sister, arrived', what is the phrase 'my sister' called, from the Latin for 'to set near'?

An appositive's commas carry meaning: 'my sister, Alice,' merely adds her name, while 'my sister Alice', with none, uses the name to say which sister is meant.

What are words like 'their', 'there' and 'they're', pronounced alike but differing in spelling or meaning, called?

Homophones can even share a spelling, like 'rose' the flower and 'rose' the past tense; 'colonel' matches 'kernel' because English kept the sound of the older form 'coronel' after the spelling changed to follow Italian.

What part of speech are the seven words of the classroom acronym FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)?

Coordinating conjunctions join items of equal rank; when one links two main clauses, style guides ask for a comma before it, as in 'Jim studied hard, but the room was noisy'.

Which pronoun correctly completes the formal question 'To ___ did you speak'?

Whom is the object form of 'who', as 'him' is of 'he', but outside formal writing most speakers now ask 'Who did you speak to?' instead.

Which word for a trusted adviser is the name of the old friend Odysseus left in charge of his son Telemachus?

Mentor does little in Homer, where it is often Athena in his shape who guides Telemachus; the everyday word probably spread from a popular 1699 French novel, Fénelon's Télémaque, which made him a wise tutor.

Which word did Thomas More coin for his 1516 book from the Greek for 'no place'?

Utopia sounds exactly like 'eutopia', Greek for 'good place', an echo More himself played on: his perfect society is literally nowhere, and its traveller's surname probably builds on the Greek for 'nonsense'.

Which citation style, widely adopted in classrooms for English papers, heads its list of sources 'Works Cited'?

MLA style comes from the Modern Language Association; since its 2016 handbook it has swapped a long list of formats for one template of core elements, from author to location, that fits any kind of work.

Which Latin word, placed in brackets after a quoted error, tells the reader the mistake was in the original?

Sic is a complete Latin word for 'thus' or 'so', not an abbreviation, so it takes no full stop; in effect it tells the reader, yes, that really is what was written.

What is the one- or two-sentence summary of an essay's core argument, usually placed near the beginning, called?

Thesis statement borrows a Greek word for 'a setting down', a proposition: it is a claim that others might dispute, not just the topic itself, and the rest of the essay exists to defend it.