Arts & Culture — Set 1: In Context flashcards
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Fill the blank: 25 of the Set 1 words, each in a new sentence from galleries, concert halls, rehearsals and films, whose clues point to one word of the pack (where a second also fits, the back says so).
Learn deck · part of Arts & Culture · written against: 150 words of literature, music, art, architecture, theater and film. Updated 2026-10-10.
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Only the cook's running gag about his missing lucky sock breaks the dread aboard the submarine; without that bit of ______, the two-hour thriller would be almost unbearable.comic reliefLiterature
Moments of humor slipped into a tense story to give the audience a short break are comic relief. An interlude is a pause between events and needn't be funny; these jokes are what lighten the dread. -
Shelved under ______ at the library, the historian's account of a self-taught clockmaker's life rests on church records and interviews with his former apprentices.biographyLiterature
A work in which a writer, here a historian, researches and tells another person's life is a biography. Memoir is tempting, but a memoir tells the writer's own experiences, and this historian writes about another man. -
Calling her heart "a locked piano no one plays," the songwriter builds a ______ that returns in every verse, until the final line opens the lid.metaphorPoetry
Calling one thing another (a heart is a locked piano) is a metaphor. A simile would usually use "like" or "as"; this line has neither. -
The band mixed the vocals so low that fans argued online about the ______, line by line, until the singer posted every word, chorus included.lyricsPoetry
Everything the singer sings, chorus included, makes up the song's lyrics. Verses are only the sections before each chorus, and a libretto is the script an opera or stage musical is built on, not a band's song. -
Every role in the ______ is sung, from the queen's grand entrance to the servant's grumbling, while the orchestra in the pit carries the drama.operaMusic
A stage work that tells its story through singing, every role included, with an orchestra in the pit, is an opera. An aria is one solo song inside it, not the whole sung drama. -
No one appears in this small oil painting, only a cracked jug, three onions and a fish, the classic subjects of a ______; the painter worked until the fish spoiled.still lifeVisual Art
When an artist paints lifeless things such as a jug, onions and a fish instead of a person or a scene, the picture is a still life. A portrait shows a person, and nobody is in this picture. -
In the studio's weekend class, we cut colored glass, wrapped each piece in copper foil and soldered them into a window panel of ______.stained glassArchitecture & Style
Colored glass pieces joined into a window make stained glass. A mosaic also uses small pieces, but they are set into a surface, not soldered into a window. -
In the full-length ______ to last year's hit game, the same knight, now gray-haired, returns to defend the castle she saved as a girl.sequelTheater & Film
A follow-up in which an earlier game's story goes on, here with the same knight, is a sequel. An epilogue is a closing section inside the same work, not a full-length game of its own. -
The artist calls the piece an ______: a gallery floor buried ankle-deep in white sand under one bare bulb, which visitors cross barefoot.installationReviews & Museums
A single work arranged in a whole room for visitors to walk through is an installation. An exhibition is a show of many works, not one piece. -
After the gallery turned down her paintings, Margit told everyone she had never wanted to show in such a stuffy place, which her friends recognized as ______.sour grapesAllusions & Myth
Pretending that something you failed to get was never worth having is sour grapes. Poetic justice is a turn of fate that hands out what was earned, and nobody here is punished or rewarded.
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About these cards
Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.
Checked against:
- Senses and parts of speech checked against Merriam-Webster.com, the American Heritage Dictionary and the Oxford Learner's, Longman and Cambridge learner's dictionaries; all definitions, notes and example sentences are original.
- Word selection is our own, from general-reader news, textbooks and frequency data (wordfreq, CC BY-SA 4.0); no publisher's list is reproduced.
- Facts in the sentences checked against the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus (ODC-By 1.0) and The Stained Glass Museum, Ely (reference only; no text copied).
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