View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 2.3 | Chapter 2.4.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What language does Mencken quote Sidney Low as saying is not taught to English youth?
(a) Greek.
(b) Russian.
(c) American.
(d) Latin.

2. Whose clarity of prevision does Mencken praise in the opening of Chapter 1.1?
(a) Madison.
(b) Waldo.
(c) Franklin.
(d) Jefferson.

3. According to Mencken at the beginning of Chapter 1.3, what do the novelists and newspapermen on either side of the Atlantic ocean delight in?
(a) Publishing.
(b) Travel.
(c) Localisms.
(d) Intercommunication.

4. Who proposed a generally accepted nomenclature for currency in 1785?
(a) Noah Webster.
(b) Gouverneur Morris.
(c) Richard Grant White.
(d) Thomas Jefferson.

5. What "great humorist" does Mencken cite in Chapter 1.3 as "celebrating 'the vigorous new vernacular of the occidental plains and mountains'"?
(a) William Dean Howells.
(b) John Fiske.
(c) Mark Twain.
(d) Samuel Elridge.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many classifications of Americanisms does Bartlett postulate in his 1859 dictionary?

2. Which Founding Father is said to have sought to establish a new American alphabet?

3. What does Mencken state is neglected by those who are professional trained to investigate it?

4. According to the report of Beverley, what did a group of soldiers turn into after eating some Jimson Weed?

5. To what phrase did Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster, and Robert Southey object as a base Americanism, as discussed in Chapter 2.3?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 219 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample