Category Archives: Reference

These are materials for teachers and parents, and you’ll find, in this category, teachers copies and answer keys for worksheets, quotes related to domain-specific knowledge in English Language Arts and social studies, and quotes on issues of professional concern. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Term of Art: Deus Ex Machina

Posted on July 28, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Deus Ex Machina: (Lat, “god from the machine) A theatrical device used in Greek tragedy. In several plays of Euripides, a god appears at the last moment to provide the solution to the tangled problems of the main characters. The god is let down from the sky on a sort of crane. The phrase has come to refer to a playwright’s use of external means to solve the problems of his characters—a practice generally frowned upon.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Write It Right: And So, And Yet.

Posted on July 28, 2020 | Leave a comment

“And So. And Yet. ‘And so they were married.’ ‘And yet a woman.’ Omit the conjunction.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

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Cato the Elder with a Pithy Statement for Our Time

Posted on July 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

“I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.”

Cato the Elder, Quoted in Plutarch, Parallel Lives

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Term of Art: Hellenistic Grammar

Posted on July 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Hellenistic Grammar: The study of grammar in the West in the period called ‘Hellenistic,’ conventionally 323-31 BC: the period of the early Stoics and Alexandrians, including Dionysius Thrax.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Term of Art: Compound Subject

Posted on July 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Compound Subject: Two or more simple subjects joined by a coordinating or correlative conjunction. Hemingway and Fitzgerald had little in common.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

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Term of Art: Prior Knowledge

Posted on July 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

“prior knowledge: The totality of an individual’s experience and knowledge at any given time—that is, what a student brings as background information to a new learning experience. The more prior knowledge a person has, the more prepared he or she will be to learn new ideas. Almost everything that a person learns or can learn depends on the extent of his or her prior knowledge. One of the major missions of school is to build students’ fund of background knowledge so they have a foundation for future learning.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Term of Art: Compound Sentence

Posted on July 26, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Compound Sentence: Two or more independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction, a correlative conjunction or a semicolon. Caesar conquered Gaul, but Alexander the Great conquered the world.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

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Renaissance Art

Posted on July 26, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Renaissance Art: Strictly, art of the period from ca. 1400 to ca. 1520, but sometimes traced back to the time of Giotto, ca. 1300. During the 14th century, Italian art, especially painting, increasingly took account of scientific perspective and moved toward realism. During the 15th century, early Renaissance development was spurred by the rediscovery of ancient classical art. Reached its climax in the first decades of the 16th century with High Renaissance Art.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Term of Art: Oral Tradition

Posted on July 26, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Oral Tradition: Poetry belonging to this tradition is composed orally, or made up as the poet goes along. As a rule, it is the product of illiterate or semi-literate societies. It is usually sung or chanted (often to musical accompaniment) and is the earliest of all poetry, in the sense that it precedes written poetry. It is still alive in many parts of the world, and in some regions of Europe: for instance, Sicily, the remoter parts of Greece, and in the central Balkans (especially Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia). In the upland districts of Yugoslavia it is still possible to find a guslar (q.v.) reciting verses on recent events. See also BALLAD; BYLINA; EPIC; FOLKSONG; NARODNE PESME”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

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Historical Term: Auto da fe

Posted on July 26, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Auto da fe (auto da fe Span., act of faith). The ceremony accompanying the execution of condemned heretics during the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. Pope Sixtus IV first authorized the Spanish monarchy to name inquisitors in a bull of 1478.  The Inquisition lasted until 1813, when it was suppressed by the Cortes de Cadiz. Restored by Ferdinand VII in 1814, it was suppressed again in 1820, only to be reinstated three years later. The last auto da fe took place in 1826; the Inquisition was finally abolished in 1834.”

Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.

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