High School Reading: Grades 11-12 Quiz: Interpreting Figures Of Speech

A student groans, "This backpack weighs more than the moon, and I only packed two books." The exaggeration mainly serves to:

A council member argues, "Our budget is a sinking ship, so the library must go overboard." Which best evaluates this support?

In "The new manager's smile was a locked door: polished, pleasant, and giving nothing away," the metaphor suggests she is:

"She kept the letter unopened for years, the only way she knew to keep it from ever saying no." What can be inferred about her?

In "After the flood swallowed the first floor, Aunt Rosa called the house 'a little damp' and put the kettle on," the understatement suggests Rosa:

In "The silence after the verdict was deafening; no one dared to move," calling the silence "deafening" mainly serves to:

In "He spoke of his award so modestly that all anyone heard was the award," the paradox implies that his modesty:

In "Her compliments arrived like invoices, each one politely expecting payment," the simile suggests that her praise:

A fan writes, "Coach Lim is the greatest mind in sports history; we've won two games this season." Which best evaluates this support?

The library had swallowed Marcus whole. He had entered at dawn with a single question about the French Revolution, and now, as the last librarian dimmed the lamps, he emerged clutching a notebook that weighed more than his conscience after the incident with his sister's diary. His mother would ask what he had learned. He would tell her everything. He would tell her nothing. The words he had gathered were mountains—and he a man with pockets.

The phrase "The words he had gathered were mountains—and he a man with pockets" most nearly conveys that Marcus:

Dr. Halvorsen's lectures were famously punishing. He would stand at the blackboard, his chalk carving equations like an archaeologist working stone, and pause only to deliver what his students called his "aphorisms of despair." One favorite: "The only way to truly understand a problem is to fail to solve it, then fail again, more thoroughly." Another: "Certainty is the disease of the underinformed." His graduate seminar, half in awe and half in exhaustion, transcribed these lines into a shared document that grew, over the years, into a kind of scripture.

Dr. Halvorsen's statement, "The only way to truly understand a problem is to fail to solve it, then fail again, more thoroughly," functions as a paradox because it:

From an editorial in a college newspaper:

Our administration boasts that it has "listened" to student concerns about tuition. And indeed it has—listened the way a wall listens to a fly. Every semester, we petition. Every semester, they hold what they charmingly call a "dialogue," which resembles conversation the way a photograph of soup resembles dinner. Then costs rise again, and the president writes a letter using the word "community" seven times. If this is listening, then I have been fluent in Mandarin since birth.

The writer's comparison of administrative "dialogue" to "a photograph of soup" resembling "dinner" is best described as:

The philosopher Ana Betancourt, in her final lecture at the Institute, offered her audience what she called "a gift no one wanted." She said: "You have come here tonight seeking answers. I will send you home with better questions, which will feel, at first, like theft. Understand: to be robbed by a philosopher is to be enriched. The emptier your certainties, the fuller your mind."

The statement "to be robbed by a philosopher is to be enriched" is a paradox that conveys the idea that:

The novelist Halvard Ness was famous for his dislike of interviews. When a young journalist once asked him to describe his writing routine, he replied, "I wake at four. I write until my hand becomes a stranger to me. Then I eat breakfast, if breakfast has not already fled the country in fear. In the afternoons I revise, which is to say I chase my sentences around the room with a broom. Evenings I spend apologizing to the language, which has not spoken to me in years and does not intend to start."

Ness's remark that he spends evenings "apologizing to the language, which has not spoken to me in years and does not intend to start" is best interpreted as:

When the verdict came down, the courtroom did not erupt so much as compress. Reporters, who moments before had been shifting and whispering, became suddenly still, as though someone had turned down the volume on the world. Marla, seated in the third row, felt the news arrive in her chest before her ears had properly processed it. Outside, she would later recall, the afternoon sunshine seemed obscene—a bright, indifferent joke told at the wrong funeral.

The phrase "a bright, indifferent joke told at the wrong funeral" primarily serves to:

In the small hours, when the city finally exhaled, Eleanor walked the boulevards alone. The streetlamps performed their nightly liturgy, murmuring benedictions of pale sodium light over the sleeping storefronts. Even the pigeons had entered their brief truce with the world. Eleanor believed, in these hours, that she was the loudest thing in the universe—each footfall a cathedral bell, each breath a summoned wind. It was, of course, absurd. But absurdity, she had learned, was the last honest religion.

The description of Eleanor as "the loudest thing in the universe—each footfall a cathedral bell, each breath a summoned wind" is best understood as:

In a speech to a graduating class:

"You have been told that the world is your oyster. I would revise the metaphor. The world is your oyster if you have brought a knife, know how to use it, do not mind the smell, and can tolerate being wrong nine times out of ten about whether there is a pearl. Otherwise, the world is simply an oyster—closed, briny, and indifferent to your appetite. I do not say this to discourage you. I say it because encouragement, unaccompanied by accuracy, is a kind of theft."

The speaker's final sentence—"encouragement, unaccompanied by accuracy, is a kind of theft"—is a paradox that suggests:

The senator's speech, delivered on the eve of the vote, was widely reprinted:

"My colleagues call this bill 'a modest step.' I have measured the step. It is the distance from the shore to the deepest part of the sea. They call it 'a small adjustment.' I have found no adjustment small enough to warrant the ruin of a single family, nor large enough, in this chamber, to shame the conscience of the majority. We will vote tonight. History—patient, unblinking, keeping her ledger in a hand steadier than ours—will read the tally in the morning."

The senator's statement that the bill's supposed "modest step" is actually "the distance from the shore to the deepest part of the sea" primarily uses hyperbole to:

From a memoir:

My grandmother, who fled two countries before she was twenty, kept a small wooden box on her nightstand. She would not say what was inside, though I asked often. "Everything I own," she told me once, "is in that box. And the box is empty." I understood, only years after her death, what she meant. The box was where she kept the things she had lost—which, being lost, could not be kept at all, and which, being unkeepable, were the only things she truly possessed.

The grandmother's statement, "Everything I own is in that box. And the box is empty," is a paradox whose meaning is best paraphrased as:

Rehearsal ran late again. The director, Yusuf, sat in the third row with his chin on his fist, watching the actors stumble through the second act. "You are all being magnificent," he called out at last, "in the way that a soufflé is magnificent five minutes after it collapses." Priya, playing the lead, laughed despite herself. Yusuf did not smile. "Again," he said. "From the top of the scene. And this time, please, remember you are human beings, not ideas of human beings."

Yusuf's remark that the actors are "magnificent, in the way that a soufflé is magnificent five minutes after it collapses" employs verbal irony to: