Life is a Cabaret: Musical Figures of Speech Quiz

Answer: Normal

You no doubt remember that a simile compares two things using the word "like" or "as". In "A Wonderful Guy". Nellie sings about how cliched it is to be in love. She is also "as trite and as gay as a daisy in May" and "bromidic and bright as a moon happy night."

Answer: Hiss

Onomatopoeia refers to words that sound like their meaning. For example, "sizzle" sounds like something sizzling, and "hiss" sounds like the noise you would make to show disapproval. Harold claims to have no interest in any bright-eyed, blushing, breathless baby-doll baby, preferring to take a chance on a more adult romance.

He flinches and shies when the lass with the delicate air goes by but smiles and grins when the gal with the touch of sin walks in.

Answer: The weeping willow is laughing

Personification assigns the actions or characteristics of people to non-human subjects. In the song "O What a Beautiful Morning", the willow is laughing, the corn is climbing clear up to the sky, and a little brown maverick is winking her eye.

Answer: Proposing on one knee

Metonymy uses one item to stand in for another with which it is often associated. For example, a wedding band, a honeymoon at Niagara Falls, and community property are all associated with marriage. Here are the opening lines of this very clever song: "The average unmarried female / Basically insecure / Due to some long frustration may react/ With psychosomatic symptoms / Difficult to endure / Affecting the upper respiratory tract. / In other words just from waiting around for that little band of gold / A person can develop a cold."

Answer: Hands

In the song "One Hand, One Heart", the pair of lovers enacts a pretend wedding. Their vows include the following words: "Make of our hands one hand, make of our hearts one heart, make of our vows one last vow: only death will part us now." The words foreshadow the tragic end of their story.

Answer: The Louvre museum

The song is "You're the Top." According to Lyricsfreak.com and genius.com, here is the list of items that epitomized excellence in the 1930s: the Louvre Museum, a symphony by Strauss, a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare's sonnet, Mickey Mouse, the Nile, the Tower of Pisa, the smile on the Mona Lisa, Mahatma Gandhi, Napoleon Brandy, the purple light of a summer night in Spain, the National Gallery, Garbo's salary, cellophane, turkey dinner, the time of a Derby winner, an arrow collar, a Coolidge dollar, the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire, an O'Neill drama, Whistler's mama, camembert, a rose,Inferno's Dante, the nose on the great Durante, a dance in Bali, a hot tamale,a boom, the dam at Boulder, the moon over Mae West's shoulder, a Waldorf salad, a Berlin ballad, the boats that glide on the sleepy Zuider Zee, an old Dutch master, Lady Astor, broccoli, romance, the steppes of Russia, and the pants on a Roxy usher.

Answer: Lovely ladies

Alliteration repeats the same sound at the beginning of multiple words in a phrase. The words "lovely ladies" occur in the song "The Docks", which is performed by sailors, prostitutes, and other unsavory women who hang around the pier.

Answer: As cute as a kitten

"State Fair" tells the adventures of the Frakes family at the Iowa State Fair. It is the only Rogers and Hammerstein musical written directly for film, and was not adapted for the stage until 1996. The charming "It Might as Well Be Spring" won the Academy Award for best song in 1945.

Other similes in the song are "I am starry eyed and vaguely discontented, like a nightingale without a song to sing" and "I'm as busy as spider spinning daydreams."

Answer: Caress you

The words to "Music of the Night" were written by Charles Hall to music composed by Andrew Lloyd Weber. The phantom sings it to entrance Christine, who he has lured to his lair underneath the Paris Opera House. Here is the full description of what the music will do: "Softly, deftly, music shall caress you.

Hear it, fear it, secretly possess you. Open up your mind, let your fantasies unwind in this darkness which you know you cannot fight. The darkness of the music of the night."

Answer: Alone Together

An oxymoron is a phrase the contains a contradiction. If you're alone, how can you be together? The song was recorded by Artie Shaw, Dizzy Gillespie, Chet Baker, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett, Judy Garland, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Washington, among many others. The opening lyrics are: "Alone together beyond the crowd. Above the world we're not too proud to cling together. We're strong
As long as we're...together." As you should know by now, the wrong answers represent alliteration and metaphor.