Terms : Hide Images
| 8415304562 | Allegory | The device of using character and/or story elements symbolically; an extended narrative in prose or verse in which characters, events, and settings represent abstract qualities and in which the writer intends a second meaning to be read beneath the surface story; the underlying meaning may be moral, religious, political, social, or satiric |  | 0 |
| 8415304563 | Antecedent | Word, phrase, or clause referred to by a pronoun. |  | 1 |
| 8415304564 | Antithesis | Opposition or contrast of ideas through parallelism. |  | 2 |
| 8415304565 | Aphorism | a short, often witty statement of a principle or a truth about life. Early to bed and early to rise help make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. -Ben Franklin |  | 3 |
| 8415304566 | Apostrophe | usually in poetry but sometimes in prose; the device of calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person or to a place, thing, or personified abstraction "Oh, Captain, my Captain, our fearful trip is done..." |  | 4 |
| 8415442617 | Argumentation | writing that attempts to prove the validity of a point of view or an idea by presenting reasoned arguments; persuasive writing is a form of argumentation | 5 | |
| 8415458768 | Assonance | the repetition of vowel sounds between different consonants, such as in neigh/fade | 6 | |
| 8415471633 | Authority | support for an argument that is based on recognized experts in the field | 7 | |
| 8415478602 | Burlesque | broad parody; whereas a parody will imitate and exaggerate a specific work, such as Romeo and Juliet, a burlesque will take an entire style or form, such as myths, and exaggerate it into ridiculousness | 8 | |
| 8415304567 | Colloquial/Colloquialism | The use of slang or informalities in speech or writing; word or phrase used in everyday conversation and informal writing but that is often inappropriate in formal writing |  | 9 |
| 8415304568 | Conceit | A fanciful expression, usually in the form of an extended metaphor; an elaborate figure of speech in which two seemingly dissimilar things or situations are compared |  | 10 |
| 8415550665 | Connotation | implied or suggested meaning of a word because of its association in the reader's mind | 11 | |
| 8415562187 | Consonance | the repetition of identical consonant sounds before and after different vowel sounds, as in boost /best; it can also be seen within several compound words, such as fulfill and Ping-Pong | 12 | |
| 8415571819 | Conundrum | a riddle whose answer is or involves a pun; it may also be a paradox or difficult problem | 13 | |
| 8415493706 | Cacophony | harsh, awkward, or dissonant sounds used deliberately in poetry or prose; the opposite of euphony | 14 | |
| 8415506498 | Caricature | descriptive writing that greatly exaggerates a specific feature of a person's appearance or a facet of personality | 15 | |
| 8415512947 | Classicism | the principles and styles admired in the classics of Greek and Roman literature, such as objectivity, sensibility, restraint, and formality | 16 | |
| 8415520689 | Coherence | quality of a piece of writing in which all the parts contribute to the development of the central idea, theme, or organizing principle | 17 | |
| 8415304569 | Euphemism | correctional facility = jail between jobs = unemployed | 18 | |
| 8415304570 | Homily | This term literally means "sermon," but more informally, it can include any serious talk, speech, or lecture involving moral or spiritual advice. |  | 19 |
| 8415304571 | Invective | An emotionally violent, verbal denunciation or attack using strong, abusive language. |  | 20 |
| 8415304572 | Metonymy | a figure of speech in which the name of one object is substituted for that of another closely associated with it. a figure of speech that uses the name of an object, person, or idea to represent something with which it is associated, such as using "the crown" to refer to a monarch |  | 21 |
| 8425318579 | Metaphor | a figure of speech in which one thing is referred to as another; for example, "my love is a fragile flower" | 22 | |
| 8425325281 | Mode | the method or form of a literary work; the manner in which a work of literature is written | 23 | |
| 8425332982 | Mood | similar to tone, mood is the primary emotional attitude of a work | 24 | |
| 8425342289 | Motif | main theme or subject of a work that is elaborated on in the development of the piece; a repeated pattern or idea | 25 | |
| 8425345908 | Myth | one story in a system of narratives set in a complete imaginary world that once served to explain the origin of life, religious beliefs, and the forces of nature as supernatural occurrences | 26 | |
| 8415304573 | Anaphora | The exact repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive lines or sentences. Specific type of repetition; word, phrase, or clause repeated at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row |  | 27 |
| 8415304574 | Pedantic | An adjective that describes words, phrases, or general tone that is overly scholarly, academic, or bookish |  | 28 |
| 8415304575 | Prose | one of the major divisions of genre, prose refers to fiction and nonfiction, including all its forms. |  | 29 |
| 8415304576 | Semantics | The branch of linguistics that studies the meaning of words. |  | 30 |
| 8415304577 | Syllogism | A deductive system of formal logic that presents two premises that inevitably lead to a sound conclusion. |  | 31 |
| 8415304578 | Synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole. a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent a whole, such as using "boards" to mean a stage or "wheels" to mean a car |  | 32 |
| 8425535965 | Speaker | the voice of a work; an author may speak as himself or herself or as a fictitious persona | 33 | |
| 8425538252 | Stereotype | a character who represents a trait that is usually attributed to a particular social or racial group and who lacks individuality | 34 | |
| 8425541523 | Style | an author's characteristic manner of expression | 35 | |
| 8425543136 | Subjectivity | a personal presentation of events and characters, influenced by the author's feelings and opinions | 36 | |
| 8425546088 | Suspension of disbelief | the demand made that the reader accept the incidents recounted in the literary works | 37 | |
| 8425548354 | Symbolism | the use of symbols or anything that is meant to be taken both literally and as representative of a higher and more complex significance | 38 | |
| 8415304579 | Synesthesia | When one kind of sensory stimulus evokes the subjective experience of another. |  | 39 |
| 8415304580 | Apologia | A written or spoken defense of one's beliefs and actions. |  | 40 |
| 8415304581 | Epigram | A brief witty statement; a concise, witty saying in poetry or prose that either stands alone or is part of a larger work; it may also refer to a short poem of this type |  | 41 |
| 8415650096 | Euphony | a succession of harmonious sounds used in poetry or prose; the opposite of cacophony | 42 | |
| 8415661281 | Exemplum | a brief tale used in medieval times to illustrate a sermon or to teach a lesson | 43 | |
| 8415673577 | Exposition | the immediate revelation to the audience of the setting and other background information necessary for understanding the plot; also, explanation; one of the four modes of discourse | 44 | |
| 8415304582 | Digression | The use of material unrelated to the subject of a work. |  | 45 |
| 8415584598 | Denotation | literal meaning of a word as defined | 46 | |
| 8415590168 | Description | the picturing in words of something or someone through detailed observation of color, motion, sound, taste, smell, and touch; one of the four modes of discourse | 47 | |
| 8415604672 | Diction | word choice, an element of style; also called syntax | 48 | |
| 8425557901 | Syntax | word choice or diction | 49 | |
| 8415617149 | Discourse | spoken or written language, including literary works; the four traditionally classified modes of discourse are description, exposition, narration, and persuasion | 50 | |
| 8415637879 | Dissonance | harsh or grating sounds that do not go together | 51 | |
| 8415304583 | Ellipsis | The omission of a word or several words. |  | 52 |
| 8415304584 | Ad Hominem | Attacking a speaker's character instead of to their argument. |  | 53 |
| 8415304585 | Anachronism | A person, scene, event or other element that fails to correspond with the appropriate time or era. an event, object, custom, person, or thing that is out of order in time; some anachronisms are unintentional, such as when an actor performing Shakespeare forgets to take off his watch; others are deliberately used to achieve a humorous or satiric effect, such as the sustained anachronism of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |  | 54 |
| 8415397637 | Analogy | a comparison of two similar but different things, usually to clarify an action or a relationship, such as comparing the work of a heart to that of a pump | 55 | |
| 8415304586 | Didactic | Having an instructive purpose; intending to convey information to teach a lesson usually in a dry, pompous manner. |  | 56 |
| 8415304587 | Fallacy | An incorrect belief or supposition based on faulty data, defective evidence, or false information. |  | 57 |
| 8415692676 | Figurative language | language that contains figures of speech, such as similes and metaphors, in order to create associations that are imaginative rather than literal | 58 | |
| 8425508401 | Simile | a figure of speech that uses like, as, or as if to make a direct comparison between two essentially different objects, actions, or qualities; for example, "the sky looked like an artist's canvas" | 59 | |
| 8415708399 | Figures of speech | expressions, such as similes, metaphors, and personifications, that make imaginative, rather than literal, comparisons or associations | 60 | |
| 8415716259 | Folklore | traditional stories, songs, dances, and customs that are preserved among a people; folklore usually precedes literature, being passed down orally from generation to generation until recorded by scholars | 61 | |
| 8415723934 | Foreshadowing | the use of a hint or clue to suggest a larger event that occurs later in the work | 62 | |
| 8415304588 | Hubris | Excessive pride that often brings about one's fall; the excessive pride or ambition that leads a tragic hero to disregard warnings of impending doom, eventually causing his or her downfall |  | 63 |
| 8415760223 | Humor | anything that causes laughter or amusement; up until the end of the Renaissance, humor meant a person's temperament | 64 | |
| 8415768890 | Hyperbole | deliberate exaggeration in order to create humor or emphasis | 65 | |
| 8415304589 | Alliteration | Repetition of consonant sounds, usually at the beginnings of words that are close to one another; for example, "beautiful blossoms blooming between the bushes" |  | 66 |
| 8415304590 | Litotes | A form of understatement in which the negative of the contrary is used to achieve emphasis or intensity. |  | 67 |
| 8415304591 | Paradox | A statement or idea that seems contradictory but is in fact true. a statement that seems to contradict itself but that turns out to have a rational meaning, as in this quotation from Henry David Thoreau: "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." |  | 68 |
| 8425390778 | Parable | a short tale that teaches a moral; similar to but shorter than an allegory | 69 | |
| 8415304592 | Non Sequitur | A statement or idea that fails to follow logically from the one before. |  | 70 |
| 8415304593 | Anecdote | A short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. |  | 71 |
| 8415304594 | Jargon | Special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group. |  | 72 |
| 8415304595 | Taciturn | Not talking much, reserved; silent, holding back in conversation. | 73 | |
| 8415304596 | Dogmatic | Inclined to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true. |  | 74 |
| 8415304597 | Pernicious | Having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way. |  | 75 |
| 8415304598 | Bellicose | Demonstrating aggression and willingness to fight. |  | 76 |
| 8415304599 | Voracious | Craving or consuming large quantities of food. |  | 77 |
| 8415304600 | Zealous | Having or showing zeal. |  | 78 |
| 8415304601 | Tacit | Understood or implied without being stated. |  | 79 |
| 8415304602 | Innuendo | An allusive or oblique remark or hint, typically a suggestive or disparaging one. |  | 80 |
| 8415304603 | Lackadaisical | Displaying or having a disinclination for physical exertion or effort; slow and relaxed. |  | 81 |
| 8415304604 | Consecrate | Make or declare (something, typically a church) sacred; dedicate formally to a religious or divine purpose. |  | 82 |
| 8415304605 | Chiasmus | A type of parallelism in which elements are reversed. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." |  | 83 |
| 8415304606 | Loose Sentence | A sentence in which the subject and verb come at the front of the sentence. a sentence that is grammatically complete before its end, such as "Thalia played the violin with an intensity never before seen in a high school music class"; the sentence is grammatically complete after the word violin | 84 | |
| 8415304607 | Petulant | Childishly sulky or bad-tempered. | 85 | |
| 8415304608 | Periodic Sentence | A sentence in which the subject and verb come toward the end of the sentence. a sentence that is not grammatically complete until its last phrase, such as, "Despite Glenn's hatred of his sister's laziness and noisy eating habits, he still cared for her." | 86 | |
| 8425419487 | Persona | a fictional voice that a writer adopts to tell a story, determined by subject matter and audience, e.g., Mark Twain | 87 | |
| 8425424489 | Personification | the attribution of human qualities to a nonhuman or an inanimate object | 88 | |
| 8425434862 | Persuasion | a form of argumentation, one of the four modes of discourse; language intended to convince through appeals to reason or emotion | 89 | |
| 8425437504 | Point of view | the perspective from which a story is presented; common points of view include the following | 90 | |
| 8425441473 | First-person narrator | a narrator, referred to as "I," who is a character in the story and relates the actions through his or her own perspective, also revealing his or her own thoughts | 91 | |
| 8425445996 | Stream of consciousness narrator | like a first-person narrator, but instead placing the reader inside the character's head, making the reader privy to the continuous, chaotic flow of disconnected, half-formed thoughts and impressions in the character's mind | 92 | |
| 8425457388 | Omniscient narrator | a third-person narrator, referred to as "he," "she," or "they," who is able to see into each character's mind and understands all the action | 93 | |
| 8425460389 | Limited omniscient narrator | a third-person narrator who reports the thoughts of only one character and generally only what that one character sees | 94 | |
| 8425465384 | Objective narrator | a third-person narrator who only reports what would be visible to a camera; thoughts and feelings are only revealed if a character speaks them | 95 | |
| 8425472951 | Protagonist | the main character of a literary work | 96 | |
| 8415304609 | Exhort | Strongly encourage or urge someone to do something. |  | 97 |
| 8415304610 | Cloistered | Kept away from the outside world; sheltered. |  | 98 |
| 8415304611 | Sarcasm | Caustic, bitter language--iterally means "to tear the flesh." harsh and personal remarks to or about someone; less subtle than irony | 99 | |
| 8415304612 | Independent Clause | A complete sentence. | 100 | |
| 8415304613 | Dependent Clause | Includes a subordinate conjunction, such as because, while, etc. | 101 | |
| 8415304614 | Allusion | A reference to something (e.g., a book, a movie, an historical event) that is presumed to be well known to the audience. | 102 | |
| 8415304615 | Satire | A work that pokes fun human vices and follies in order to call attention to a larger problem. |  | 103 |
| 8415304616 | Parody | A work that closely imitates the style or content of another with the specific aim of comic effect and/or ridicule. a work that ridicules the style of another work by imitating and exaggerating its elements |  | 104 |
| 8425406352 | Parallelism | the technique of arranging words, phrases, clauses, or larger structures by placing them side by side and making them similar in form | 105 | |
| 8415304617 | Coup de Grace | The "death blow"--the culminating event in a bad situation. |  | 106 |
| 8415304618 | Coup d'Etat | Literally "blow to the state"--a violent overthrow. |  | 107 |
| 8415304619 | Faux Pas | A social misstep or inappropriate action. | 108 | |
| 8415304620 | Laissez-Faire | Literally "allow to do"--letting things run their natural course; hands off. | 109 | |
| 8415304621 | En Masse | In a body as a whole; as a group. | 110 | |
| 8415304622 | Proprietary | Characteristic of an owner of property; constituting property. | 111 | |
| 8415304623 | Propriety | The quality of behaving in a proper manner; obeying rules and customs. | 112 | |
| 8415304624 | Imminent | About to happen. | 113 | |
| 8415304625 | Eminent | Famous, outstanding, distinguished. | 114 | |
| 8415304626 | Ego | According to Freud, the decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle. | 115 | |
| 8415304627 | Superego | According to Freud, that facet of the psyche that represents the internalized ideals and values of one's parents and society | 116 | |
| 8415304628 | Id | Literally the "It"--our base impulses, driven by selfishness and greed, for example. | 117 | |
| 8425270280 | idyll | a short descriptive narrative, usually a poem, about an idealized country life; also called a pastoral | 118 | |
| 8425272769 | imagery | words or phrases that use a collection of images to appeal to one or more of the five senses in order to create a mental picture | 119 | |
| 8425278663 | Interior monologue | writing that records the conversation that occurs inside a character's head | 120 | |
| 8425282290 | Inversion | reversing the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase; it is used effectively in many cases, such as posing a question: "Are you going to the store?"; often, it is used ineffectively in poetry, making it sound artificial and stilted: "To the hounds she rode, with her flags behind her streaming" | 121 | |
| 8425285795 | Irony | a situation or statement in which the actual outcome or meaning is opposite to what was expected | 122 | |
| 8415304629 | Hamartia | A character's error in judgment that contributes to one's downfall. | 123 | |
| 8415304630 | Orwellian | The manipulation of language and ideas to control and obstruct the truth. | 124 | |
| 8415304631 | Autonomos | Independent, self-governing, not under the control of something or someone else. |  | 125 |
| 8415745235 | Genre | a type of literary work, such as a novel or poem; there are also subgenres, such as science fiction or sonnet, within the larger genres | 126 | |
| 8425361616 | Narration | the telling of a story in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama; one of the four modes of discourse | 127 | |
| 8425363808 | Naturalism | a literary movement that grew out of realism in France, the United States, and England in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries; it portrays humans as having no free will, being driven by the natural forces of heredity, environment, and animalistic urges over which they have no control | 128 | |
| 8425374308 | Objectivity | an impersonal presentation of events and characters | 129 | |
| 8425374332 | Onomatopeia | the use of words that sound like what they mean, such as h i s s and b o o m | 130 | |
| 8425377195 | Oxymoron | a figure of speech composed of contradictory words or phrases, such as "wise fool" | 131 | |
| 8425483925 | Realism | a nineteenth-century literary movement in Europe and the United States that stressed accuracy in the portrayal of life, focusing on characters with whom middle-class readers could easily identify; it is in direct contrast with romanticism | 132 | |
| 8425485855 | Regionalism | an element in literature that conveys a realistic portrayal of a specific geographical locale, using the locale and its influences as a major part of the plot | 133 | |
| 8425487812 | Rhetoric | the art of using language effectively; involves (1) writer's purpose, (2) his or her consideration of the audience, (3) the exploration of the subject, (4) arrangement and organization of the ideas, (5) style and tone of expression, and (6) form | 134 | |
| 8425491947 | Rhetorical modes | exposition, description, narration, argumentation | 135 | |
| 8425495823 | Romanticism | a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement that began in the eighteenth century as a reaction to neoclassicism; the focal points of the movement are imagination, emotion, and freedom, stressing subjectivity, individuality, the love and worship of nature, and a fascination with the past | 136 | |
| 8425563513 | Theme | the central idea or "message" of a literary work | 137 | |
| 8425565162 | Tone | the characteristic emotion or attitude of an author toward the characters, subject, and audience | 138 | |
| 8425569445 | Unity | quality of a piece of writing; see also coherence | 139 | |
| 8425578271 | Voice | the way a written work conveys an author's attitude | 140 |
