Poetry Terms
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| 1106918309 | alliteration | repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, usually at the beginning of words | 0 | |
| 1106918310 | allusion | a reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well-known historical or literary event, person, or work | 1 | |
| 1106918311 | antithesis | a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas. Antithesis is a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness. | 2 | |
| 1106918312 | apostrophe | figure of speech in which someone, some abstract quality, or a nonexistent personage is directly addressed as though present | 3 | |
| 1106918313 | assonance | repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. "The land laid waste with all its young men slain" repeats the same "a" sound. | 4 | |
| 1106918314 | ballad meter | a four-line stanza rhymed abcd with four feet in lines one and three and three feet in lines two and four. O mother, mother make my bed. O make it soft and narrow. Since my love died for me today, I'll die for him tomorrow. | 5 | |
| 1106918315 | blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter. Blank verse is the meter of most Shakespeare's plays, as well as that of Milton's Paradise Lost. | 6 | |
| 1106918316 | cacophony | harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones | 7 | |
| 1106918317 | caesura | a pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse, usually indicated by the sense of the line, and often greater than the normal pause. To err is human, to forgive is divine | 8 | |
| 1106918318 | conceit | an ingenious and fanciful notion or conception, usually expressed through an elaborate analogy, and pointing to a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar things. A conceit may be a brief metaphor, but it also may form the framework of an entire poem. | 9 | |
| 1106918319 | consonance | repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words | 10 | |
| 1106918320 | couplet | two line stanza, usually with end rhymes the same | 11 | |
| 1106918321 | devices of sound | techniques of deploying the sound of words (rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, ad onomatopoeia) | 12 | |
| 1106918322 | diction | use of words in a literary work. Formal, informal, colloquial, slang | 13 | |
| 1106918323 | didactic poem | intended primarily to teach a lesson | 14 | |
| 1106918324 | dramatic poem | employs a dramatic form or some element or elements of dramatic techniques as a means of achieving poetic ends | 15 | |
| 1106918325 | elegy | a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet's meditations on death or another solemn theme | 16 | |
| 1106918326 | end-stopped | a line with a pause at the end. Lines that end with a period, a comma, a colon, a semicolon, an exclamation point, or a question mark | 17 | |
| 1106918327 | enjambent | the continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next ....Or if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd Fast by the oracle of God... | 18 | |
| 1106918328 | extended metaphor | implied analogy, or comparison, which is carried throughout a stanza or entire poem. | 19 | |
| 1106918329 | euphony | style in which combinations of words pleasant to the ear predominate. opposite of cacophony | 20 | |
| 1106918330 | eye rhyme | rhyme that appears correct from spelling, but is half-rhyme or slant rhyme from the pronunciation. "watch" and "match," "love" and "move" | 21 | |
| 1106918331 | feminine rhyme | rhyme of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed, as "waken" and "forsaken" and "audition" and "rendition". also called double rhyme | 22 | |
| 1106918332 | figurative language | writing that uses figures of speech | 23 | |
| 1106918333 | free verse | poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical | 24 | |
| 1106918334 | heroic couplet | two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit. | 25 | |
| 1106918335 | hyperbole | a deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration | 26 | |
| 1106918336 | imagery | images of a literary work, sensory details of a work, figurative language of a work; visual auditory or tactile images evoked by the words of a literary work or the images that figurative language evokes | 27 | |
| 1106918337 | irony | contrast between the actual meaning and the suggestion of another meaning; can be confused with sarcasm, but it differs in that it is usually lighter and less harsh | 28 | |
| 1106918338 | verbal irony | figure of speech in which the actual intent is expressed in words which carry the opposite meaning | 29 | |
| 1106918339 | internal rhyme | rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end | 30 | |
| 1106918340 | lyric poem | any short poem that presents a single speaker who expresses thoughts and feelings. Love lyrics are common, but these have also been written on subjects as different as religion and reading. includes sonnets and odes | 31 | |
| 1106918341 | masculine rhyme | rhyme that falls on the stressed and concluding syllables of the rhyme-words. "keep" and "sleep", "glow" and "no" | 32 | |
| 1106918342 | meter | the repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry. emphasizes the musical quality of the language and often relates directly to the subject matter of the poem. each unit is known as a foot | 33 | |
| 1106918343 | metonymy | figure of speech which is characterized by the substitution of a term naming an object closely associated with the word in mind for the word itself. calling the king the "crown" | 34 | |
| 1106918344 | mixed metaphors | the mingling of one metaphor with another immediately following with which the first is incongruous | 35 | |
| 1106918345 | narrative poem | non-dramatic poem which tells a story or presents a narrative, whether simple or complex, long or short. Epics and ballads are examples of this | 36 | |
| 1106918346 | octave | eight-line stanza, most commonly refers to the first division of an Italian sonnet | 37 | |
| 1106918347 | onomatopoeia | the use of words whose sound suggests their meaning | 38 | |
| 1106918348 | oxymoron | form of a paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression, usually serves the purpose of shocking the reader into awareness | 39 | |
| 1106918349 | paradox | situation or action or feeling that appears to be contradictory but on inspection turns out to be true or at least to make sense | 40 | |
| 1106918350 | parallelism | similar grammatical structure within a line or liens of poetry. characteristic of Asian poetry, being notably present in the Psalms | 41 | |
| 1106918351 | paraphrase | restatement of an idea in such a way as to retain the meaning while changing the diction and form. amplification of the original for the purpose of clarity | 42 | |
| 1106918352 | personification | a kind of metaphor that gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics | 43 | |
| 1106918353 | poetic foot | a group of syllables in verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it. (iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, pyrrhic, spondaic) | 44 | |
| 1106918354 | pun | play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings | 45 | |
| 1106918355 | quatrain | four-line stanza with an combinations of rhymes | 46 | |
| 1106918356 | refrain | a group of words forming a phrase or sentence and consisting of one or more lines repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza | 47 | |
| 1106918357 | rhyme | close similarity or identity of sound between accented syllables occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse | 48 | |
| 1106918358 | rhyme royal | a seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, used by Chaucer and other medieval poets | 49 | |
| 1106918359 | rhythm | the recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables, lends both pleasure and heightened emotional response to the listener or reader | 50 | |
| 1106918360 | sarcasm | a type of irony in which a person appears to be praising something but is actually insulting it, its purpose is to injure or to hurt | 51 | |
| 1106918361 | satire | writing that seeks to arouse a reader's disapproval of an object by ridicule, usually comedy that exposes errors with an eye to correct vice and folly | 52 | |
| 1106918362 | scansion | system for describing the meter of a poem by identifying the number and the types of feet per line (monometer, dimeter, trimester, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, octameter) | 53 | |
| 1106918363 | sestet | six-line stanza, most commonly refers to the second division of an Italian sonnet | 54 | |
| 1106918364 | simile | directly expressed comparison of two objects using "as" "like" "than" | 55 | |
| 1106918365 | sonnet | normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem | 56 | |
| 1106918366 | stanza | usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme | 57 | |
| 1106918367 | strategy (rhetorical strategy) | management of language for a specific effect. planned placing of elements to achieve an effect. | 58 | |
| 1106918368 | structure | arrangement of materials within a work ; the relationship of the parts of a work to the whole; the logical divisions of a work; line and stanza | 59 | |
| 1106918369 | style | mode of expression in language; the characteristic manner of expression of an author | 60 | |
| 1106918370 | symbol | something that is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else | 61 | |
| 1106918371 | synecdoche | a form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole | 62 | |
| 1106918372 | syntax | ordering of words into patterns or sentences | 63 | |
| 1106918373 | tercet | stanza of three lines in which each line ends with the same rhyme | 64 | |
| 1106918374 | terza rima | a three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc, etc. Divine Comedy | 65 | |
| 1106918375 | theme | main thought expressed by a work; abstract concept which is made concrete through its representation in person, action, and image in the work | 66 | |
| 1106918376 | tone | manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude; intonation of the voice that expresses meaning | 67 | |
| 1106918377 | understatement | opposite of hyperbole, kind of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is | 68 | |
| 1106918378 | villanelle | nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets and final quatrain; uses only two rhymes which are repeated as follows: aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa | 69 |
