PRACTICE EXAM WITH DETAILED SOLUTIONS
2026
◉ Allusion. Answer: A reference, explicit or implicit, to something in
previous literature or history.
◉ Hyperbole. Answer: An overstatement used to stress a point.
◉ Pun. Answer: A kind of word-play that depends upon identical or
similar sounds among words with different meanings.
◉ Paradox. Answer: A statement or expression playing on words
that initially seems self- contradictory, but which provokes reflection
on ways or contexts in which it might seem valid.
◉ Oxymoron. Answer: a condensed paradox combining two
contradictory terms, such as bittersweet.
◉ Alliteration. Answer: A repetition of a sound, usually the initial
sound, in a sequence of words, such as "Full many a flower is born to
blush unseen" (Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard").
, ◉ Assonance. Answer: A pattern of identical or similar vowel
sounds, usually in stressed syllables of words with different end
sounds. For example, the "o" sound is repeated five times in this line
from George Gordon, Lord Byron's "Childe Harold": "Roll on, thou
deep and dark-blue ocean, roll!"
◉ Consonance. Answer: A pleasant combination of sounds; also, the
repetition of consonants or groups of consonant, particularly at the
ends of words. See also alliteration, assonance.
◉ Rhyme. Answer: Concurrence of similar or identical sounds
within different words.
◉ Rhyme Scheme. Answer: The pattern of repeated words-sounds
throughout the course of an entire poem or stanza.
◉ Approximate Rhyme. Answer: Also referred to as slant or near
rhyme, these rhymes share sound qualities or sounds within words.
An example of such a rhyme is the feminine or half rhyme.
Approximate rhymes are often repeated strategically within a
perfect rhyme scheme in order to achieve a particular effect, e.g.,
told, woe.