Arts & Culture — Set 1: Meanings flashcards
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The 75 most common of the 150 Arts & Culture words, from genre and still life to swan song: pronunciation, a plain definition and three example sentences, the most common use first.
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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comic relief (n.) · KAH-mik rih-LEEFmoments of humor, such as a joking character or a silly scene, that a writer slips into a grave or tense story to give the audience a short breakLiterature
A bumbling sidekick provides comic relief in an otherwise grim war film.
In Hamlet, two joking gravediggers bring comic relief just before the tragic ending.
After three tense acts, the audience welcomed any comic relief at all. -
genre (n.) · ZHAHN-ruhone of the groups, such as horror or jazz, into which films, books, music and art are sorted by the conventions they followLiterature
Science fiction is her favorite genre, though she reads mysteries too.
The director blends genres, crossing a western with a ghost story.
The festival screens genre films—horror, fantasy and action—every Friday night. -
verse (n.) · VURSpoetry, or any writing built on a steady beat and broken into lines; in a song, a block of lines that builds up to the chorusPoetry
Uncle Teo even writes his grocery lists in verse, rhyming "eggs" with "pegs."
After two novels, she turned to verse and never looked back.
The second verse tells how the singer left her hometown. -
meter (n.) · MEE-turthe steady pattern that stressed and unstressed syllables follow from line to line in a poem; the grouping of beats in musicPoetry
Students clapped out the meter of each line before reciting the poem.
The poem's meter stumbles in the last line, so it's hard to read aloud.
A waltz is in triple meter, with three beats to each measure.
Watch out: the everyday meter is a unit of length, or a device that measures, like a parking meter. -
opera (n.) · AH-puh-ruha stage work that tells its story mainly or entirely through singing, accompanied by an orchestraMusic
The opera is sung in Italian, with English translations shown above the stage.
Verdi wrote Aida for an opera house in Cairo, where it premiered in 1871.
We dressed up for our first night at the opera. -
still life (n.) · STIL LIGHFa picture in which the artist's subject is not a person or a scene but lifeless things such as fruit, flowers or bottlesVisual Art
The museum's Dutch still life shows lemons, oysters and a tipped silver cup.
Our art class painted a still life of seashells and an old lantern.
Cézanne painted still lifes of apples again and again.
Watch out: Merriam-Webster gives the plural as still lifes. -
dome (n.) · DOHMa rounded roof shaped like half a ball, often over a large hall or buildingArchitecture & Style
The capitol's white dome can be seen from miles away.
Rome's Pantheon has a concrete dome with an open hole at its peak.
Lying back in the planetarium, we watched stars sweep across the dome. -
box office (n.) · BAHKS AH-fishow much a film or show earns by selling tickets; a venue's ticket window or boothTheater & Film
The animated film topped the box office for three straight weekends.
The sequel's box office fell far short of the original's.
A line of fans had wrapped around the box office by noon. -
exhibition (n.) · ek-suh-BISH-uhna time when a museum or other venue puts art or objects on public view, often for only a few weeks or months; any display of skill in front of an audienceReviews & Museums
The exhibition of Japanese prints runs through January.
Her first solo exhibition sold out on opening night.
The team played an exhibition game that didn't count in the standings. -
catch-22 (n.) · KACH-twen-tee-TOOa no-win bind in which a rule, or the problem itself, shuts off the only escapeAllusions & Myth
Young illustrators face a catch-22: publishers want experience, but only publishers provide it.
A bureaucratic catch-22 traps the hero of Heller's war novel.
Lawmakers promised to fix the catch-22 that keeps new nurses from getting hired.
Origin: named for the rule in Joseph Heller's 1961 novel Catch-22 that any airman who asks to be grounded as insane must be sane.
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About these cards
Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.
Checked against:
- Senses, parts of speech and pronunciations 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.
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