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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 4.4 | Chapter 4.5.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. According to Mencken, which title is subject to the greatest divergence in usage?
(a) Doctor.
(b) The Honorable.
(c) General.
(d) Professor.

2. What country's works dominated the reading habits of the American colonists in the latter 18th century?
(a) France.
(b) England.
(c) Germany.
(d) Denmark.

3. What word in common honorifics did Edwin S. Gould protest against omitting in 1867?
(a) Most.
(b) Right.
(c) The.
(d) Very.

4. What does John S. Farmer describe the Western vernacular as being?
(a) Racy and pungent.
(b) Dry and prolonged.
(c) Irreverent and irrelevant.
(d) Flippant and pointless.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. Which is the first factor that Mencken identifies as an immediate impediment to the growth of the American language in Chapter 3.1?

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

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?

4. What is the American substitute for the English word "tin"?

5. Which is the second factor that Mencken identifies as an impediment to the growth of the American language in Chapter 3.1?

(see the answer key)

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