Terms : Hide Images
| 5149515109 | Alliteration | The repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginning of words. "Gnus never know pneumonia" is an example of this because despite the spellings, all four words begin with the "n" sound. | 0 | |
| 5149515110 | Assonance | The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. " A land laid waste with all its young men slain" repeats the same "a" sound in "laid,' "waste," and "slain." | 1 | |
| 5149515111 | Ballad Meter | A four line stanza rhymed abcb 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. | 2 | |
| 5149518950 | Blank Verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell/From heaven, they fabled, throuwn by angry Jove/ Sheer o'er the crystal battlements: from morn/ To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve. This is the meter of most of Shakespeare's plays as well as that of Milton's Paradise Lost. | 3 | |
| 5149518951 | Dactyl | A metrical foot of three syllables, an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables. | 4 | |
| 5149521575 | End-Stopped | A line with a pause at the end. Lines that end with a period, comma, colon, semicolon, exclamation point, or question mark are end-stopped lines. | 5 | |
| 5149521576 | Free Verse | Poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical. The poetry of Walt Whitman is perhaps the best known example of free verse. | 6 | |
| 5149521577 | Heroic Couplet | Two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit. When those fair suns shall set, as set they must,/ And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,/ This lock, the Muse shall consecrate to fame,/ And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name. | 7 | |
| 5149525457 | Hexameter | A line containing six feet. | 8 | |
| 5149525458 | Iamb | A two-syllable foot with an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. This is the most common foot in English poetry. | 9 | |
| 5149528635 | Internal Rhyme | Rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end. "God save thee, ancient Mariner!/ From the friends, that plague thee thus!/ Why look'st thou so?" With my / crossbow/ I shot the Albatross. Line three contains this with the words "so" and "bow." | 10 | |
| 5149528636 | Onomatopoeia | The use of words whose sound suggest their meaning. Examples are "buzz," "hiss," or "honk." | 11 | |
| 5149531639 | Pentameter | A line containing five feet. The iambic pentameter is the most common line in English verse written before 1950. | 12 | |
| 5149531640 | Rhyme Royal | A seven line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, used by Chaucer and other medieval poets. | 13 | |
| 5149534028 | Sonnet | Normally a fourteen line imbiac pentameter poem. The conventional Italian, or Petrachan, sonnet is rhymed abba, abba, cde, cde; the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg. | 14 | |
| 5149534029 | Stanza | Usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme. | 15 | |
| 5149534030 | Terza Rima | A three line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc. Dante's Divine Comedy is written in this. | 16 | |
| 5149536302 | Tetrameter | A line of four feet. | 17 | |
| 5149536303 | Antecedent | That which goes before, especially the word, phrase, or clause to which a pronoun refers. | 18 | |
| 5149536304 | Clause | A group of words containing a subject and its verb that may or may not be a complete sentence. In the sentence "When you are old, you will be beautiful, "the first clause (When you are old") is a dependent clause and not a complete sentence. "You will be beautiful" is an independent clause and could stand by itself. | 19 | |
| 5149536305 | Ellipsis | The omission of a word or several words necessary for a complete construction that is still understandable. "If rainy, bring an umbrella" is clear though the words "it is" and "you" have been left out. | 20 | |
| 5149539196 | Imperative | The mood of a verb that gives an order. "Eat your spinach" uses an --- verb. | 21 | |
| 5149539197 | Modify | To restrict or limit in meaning. In the phrase "large, shaggy dog," the two adjectives modify the noun; in the phrase "very shaggy dog," the adverb "very" modifies the adjective "shaggy" which modifies the noun "dog." | 22 | |
| 5149539198 | Parallel Structure | A similar grammatical structure within a sentence or within a paragraph. Winston Churchill's "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields" speech or Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech depend chiefly on the use of parallel structure. | 23 | |
| 5149539199 | Periodic Sentence | A sentence grammatically complete on a the end. When conquering love did first my heart assail,/Unto mine aid I summoned every sense. In this type of sentence the important idea is at the end. | 24 | |
| 5149542145 | Loose Sentence | A sentence that is grammatically complete before the period. Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair. In this sentence, the important idea is first. | 25 | |
| 5149542146 | Syntax | The structure of a sentence. | 26 |
