Story: is a loyal and ever-patient black slave, the main character of Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin
Meaning: black man whose behavior to white people is regarded as submissively servile, and by extension can refer to anyone regarded as betraying his or her cultural or social allegiance.
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Jekyll and Hyde
Front
Story: Dr. Jekyll discovers a drug that allows him to have a separate personality, Mr. Hyde, through which he can express the evil side of his personality.
Meaning: a character with two dueling personalities, which can have either personality come out rather quickly
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Pickwick
Front
jovial, generous, and unworldly in character and short, plump and bespectacled in appearance.
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Svengali
Front
Story: is a musician in George Du Maurier's novel Trilby (1894) who trains Trilby's voice and makes her a famous singer. His control over her is so great that when he dies, she loses her ability to sing
Meaning: someone who establishes considerable or near-total influence over someone else—a person who exercises a controlling or mesmeric influence on another, especially for a sinister purpose.
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Bumble
Front
Story: Mr. Bumble is in Dickens's Oliver Twist and is a minor official in the workhouse where Oliver is brought up. Bumble is a cruel, fussy man with mighty ideas of his own importance
Meaning: arrogance and conceit of the petty dignitary.
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Brobdingnag
Front
Story: a place of giants visited in Gullivar's Travels by swift.
Meaning: something of huge proportions, immense, gigantic
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Pangloss
Front
Story: In Voltaire's Candide (1759), Dr. Pangloss is the tutor who imbues Candide with his guiding philosophy that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. No matter what misfortunes they each suffer on their travels, Pangloss confidently and complacently assures Candide that things could not be otherwise.
Meaning: describes a person who is optimistic regardless of the circumstances.
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Lothario
Front
Story: a byword for libertinism
Meaning: free indulgence in sensual pleasures, seducing a woman
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Friday
Front
Story: is in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and is the name given by Crusoe to the man he meets on his island, on a Friday, after spending many years there alone following a shipwreck. The two become close friends and constant companions.
Meaning: loyal and willing assistant
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Scrooge
Front
A character who is bitter, self-centered and greedy
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Frankenstein
Front
Meaning: anything that threatens and/or destroys the person who created it
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Pollyana
Front
Someone who tends to find the good in everything, but can be foolishly or blindly optimistic
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Uriah heep
Front
Story: is the shrewd, deceitful clerk of the lawyer Mr. Wickfield in Dickens's David Copperfield
Meaning: obsequiousness and false humility, and his often repeated gesture of rubbing his hands together as he speaks
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Quixotic
Front
To have impractical ideas of perfection and over idealize situations
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Don Juan
Front
Story: Spanish noble man
Meaning: reputation for seducing women.
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Falstaff
Front
Story: Sir John Falstaff is the fat, witty, good-humored old knight in Shakespeare's Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Meaning: fat, jolly and debauched
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Babbit
Front
Story: George Babbitt was the protagonist of the satirical novel Babbitt (1922) by Sinclair Lewis.
Meaning: materialistic, complacent, and conformist businessman.
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Don Quixote
Front
Story: a Spanish noble who was an individual who reaches for elaborate unrealistic dreams.
Meaning: extremely idealistic, unrealistic and impractical.
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Little Lord Fauntleroy
Front
Story: From the name of the boy hero of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel LLF
Meaning: excessively well-mannered or elaborately dressed young boy.
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Tartuffe
Front
Story: the hypocrite in the work Tartuffe, an Imposter
Meaning: describes a religious hypocrite or a hypocritical pretender to excellence of any kind.
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Simon legree
Front
Story: is the cruel cotton plantation owner in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-42) to whom Tom is sold and who beats Tom to death.
Meaning: brutal taskmaster.
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Robot
Front
Something that looks and acts like a human, but has no emotions
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Yahoo
Front
Story: are the imaginary race of brutish creatures, resembling humans, in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). They embody all the baser vices and instincts of the human race.
Meaning: to a course, loutish, or rowdy person, or one who engages in wanton vandalism. Also, can be a rude, noisy or violent person.
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Walter mitty
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Story: James Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) relates how a henpecked husband escapes his wife's nagging by retreating into his own world of daydreams in which he is the hero of many adventures
Meaning: someone who lives in a fantasy world, especially someone who has lost touch with reality.
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Malapropism
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Story: Mrs. Malaprop is known for her aptitude for misusing long words, the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often with an amusing effect
Meaning: unintentional and very humorous misuse of a word/phrase
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Lilliputian
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Story: In book one of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Gulliver finds himself shipwrecked on the island of Lilliput. The tiny Lilliputians are only 6 inches tall and are as small-minded as they are small-bodied
Meaning: trivial or very small, petty
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Galahad
Front
Story: was the noblest knight of the Round Table, the son of Sir Lancelot and Elaine. His immaculate purity and virtue predestine him to succeed in the quest for the Holy Grail
Meaning: person characterized by nobility, integrity, or courtesy.
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Rodomontade
Front
To rant with excessive pride and self satisfaction. It often has little effect
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Milquetoast
Front
A weak, timid, and passive character
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Pooh-bah
Front
Someone who is holding many offices in a high position, but can give the impression that they are more important than they actually are
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Cinderella
Front
Meaning:(1) a person or thing that is undeservedly neglected or ignored, (2) used to describe a transformation from poverty of plainness to prosperity or glamour, (3) refer to an undervalued service that nobody will provide for, or(4) an instruction that must be followed precisely (late-night deadline).
