📚

Classic Literature

A small set of novels — 1984, Frankenstein, Kafka, Don Quixote — that became reference systems in their own right. Their adjectives outlived the books.

14 entries

Level

Core

Common

All

phrase

Classic Literature

Big Brother

An all-seeing authority that monitors and controls.

phrase

Classic Literature

Catch-22

A no-win situation whose escape clauses contradict each other.

phrase

Classic Literature

Down the Rabbit Hole

Falling into a strange, absorbing, often disorienting investigation or world.

character

Classic Literature

Dracula

The aristocratic vampire — seductive, dangerous, undying.

phrase

Classic Literature

Faustian Bargain

A deal that gives you what you want now at the cost of something you'll regret losing later — typically your soul, or its modern equivalents.

character

Classic Literature

Frankenstein

A creator who builds something they cannot control.

phrase

Classic Literature

Jekyll and Hyde

Someone with two sharply opposed sides — respectable in public, monstrous in private.

adjective

Classic Literature

Kafkaesque

Nightmarishly absurd, especially in the face of impersonal bureaucracy.

adjective

Classic Literature

Machiavellian

Cunning, manipulative, and willing to do whatever is necessary to retain power.

adjective

Classic Literature

Orwellian

Reminiscent of totalitarian surveillance, propaganda, and language control.

character

Classic Literature

Scrooge

The miserly, joyless tightwad — and, by the end of the story, the cautionary tale of one.

character

Classic Literature

Sherlock Holmes

The template for every brilliant, prickly detective who solves crimes by spotting what everyone else missed.

story

Classic Literature

The Great Gatsby

The American Dream as a glittering, hollow pursuit that ends badly.

story

Classic Literature

The Wizard of Oz

The all-powerful authority who turns out to be an ordinary man working levers behind a curtain.