Terms : Hide Images
| 4952499266 | Alliteration | the repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginnings of words. Example- "Gus never knew pneumonia" | 0 | |
| 4952523948 | Allusion | a reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well-known historical or literary event. Example- "To have squeezed the universe into a ball" (a line from a work by T.S. Eliot) is an allusion to Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" | 1 | |
| 4952558756 | Antithesis | a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas. Example- "man proposes; God disposes" | 2 | |
| 4952570750 | Apostrophe | a figure of speech in which an absent person, abstract quality, or nonexistent personage is addressed as though present Example- "Papa above! Regard a mouse" (refers to deceased father) | 3 | |
| 4952597082 | Assonance | the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. Example- "a land laid waste with young men slain" | 4 | |
| 4952604797 | Ballad meter | a four line stanza rhymed abcd with four feet in lines 1 and 3 and three feet in lines 2 and 4. Example- "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 | |
| 4952631336 | Blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter. Example- Milton's "Paradise Lost" | 6 | |
| 4952640414 | Cacophony | a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones. Example- "Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the may-crammed beast?" | 7 | |
| 4952656744 | Caesura | a pause, usually near the middle of the line or verse, usually indicated by the sense of the line, and often greater than the normal pause. Example- "to err is human, to forgive divine." (caesura after "human") | 8 | |
| 4952676603 | 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. Example- in "A Valediction: Forbidding Morning", in which the speaker compares his own soul and that of his wife to two legs on a mathematical compass | 9 | |
| 4952712017 | Consonance | the repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words, usually ending consonants. Example- "bill and ball", "born and burn" | 10 | |
| 4952726770 | Couplet | a two-line stanza, usually with similar end-rhymes. Example- "Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow." (Romeo and Juliet) | 11 | |
| 4952754828 | Sound Devices | the techniques of deploying the sound of words, especially in poetry, and including but not limited to onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and rhyme. Example- "Bang! The gunshot reverberated throughout the caves" | 12 | |
| 4952820274 | Diction | the use of words in a literary work. can be formal, consultative, informal, conversational, jargon, etc. Example- "Gregory, on my word, we'll not carry coals" suggests an aristocratic, educated, elitist personality, not solely from the content but the diction as well | 13 | |
| 4952851718 | Didactic Poem | a poem which is intended primarily to teach a lesson. Example- Alexander Pope's "Essay on Criticism" | 14 | |
| 4952873451 | Dramatic Poem | a poem which employs a dramatic form or some element or elements of dramatic techniques as a means of achieving poetic ends. Example- "Prometheus Unbound" | 15 | |
| 4952907699 | Elegy | a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet's meditations upon death or another solemn theme. Example- "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" | 16 | |
| 4952954719 | End-stopped | a line with a pause at the end (period, comma, pause, exclamation point, question mark, etc.) Example- " True ease in writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those moves easiest who have learn'd to dance" | 17 | |
| 4952974376 | Enjambment | a continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next. Example- "Or if Sion hill, Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd, Fast by the Oracle of God" | 18 | |
| 4952994193 | Extended metaphor | an implied analogy, or comparison, which is carried throughout a stanza or an entire poem. Example- "The Bait", where a woman is compared to a fish bait and men to fish that want to be caught by the women | 19 | |
| 4953018905 | Euphony | a style in which combinations of words pleasant to the ear predominate. Example- "A thing of beauty is a joy forever, Its loveliness increases; it will never, Pass into nothingness; but still will keep, A bower quiet for us, and a sleep" | 20 | |
| 4953047171 | Eye Rhyme | rhyme that appears correct from spelling, but is slant rhyme in sound. Example- "watch" and "match" | 21 | |
| 4953059078 | Feminine Rhyme | a rhyme of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed. Example- "waken" and "forsaken" | 22 | |
| 4953071306 | Figurative Language | writing that uses figures of speech to convey a meaning apart from the literal meaning. Example- metaphor, simile, irony | 23 | |
| 4953085280 | Free Verse | Poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical. Example- "A Noiseless Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman | 24 | |
| 4953125372 | Heroic Couplet | two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed as aa, bb, cc, with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit. Example- "But when to mischief mortals bend their will, How soon they find fit instruments of ill!" | 25 | |
| 4953150448 | Hyperbole | a deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration. Example- "No; this my hand will rather, The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red." | 26 | |
| 4953181551 | Imagery | the images in a literary work; the sensory details of a work; the figurative language of a work. Example- "The venerable woods, Rivers that move, In majesty, and the complaining brooks, That make the meadows green" (from "Thanatopsis") | 27 | |
| 4953224007 | Irony | the contrast between the actual meaning and the suggestion of another meaning. Example- "Two households that are alike in dignity" (from "Romeo and Juliet") | 28 | |
| 4953291124 | Internal Rhyme | rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end. Example- "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary" | 29 | |
| 4953304157 | Lyric Poem | any short poem that presents a single speaker who expresses thoughts and feelings. Example- "On Being Human" by C.S. Lewis | 30 | |
| 4953330071 | Masculine Rhyme | rhyme that falls on the stresses and concluding syllables of the rhyme-words. Example- "keep" and "sleep" | 31 | |
| 4953343470 | Metaphor | a figurative use of language in which a comparison is expressed without the use of a comparative term like "like" or "as". Example- "the black bat night" | 32 | |
| 4953362271 | Meter | the repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry. Example- "But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?" is iambic pentameter | 33 | |
| 4953384371 | Metonymy | a 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. Example- referring to the king as the "crown" | 34 | |
| 4953551791 | Mixed metaphors | the mingling of one metaphor with another immediately following with which the first is incongruous. Example- "I smell a rat. I see it floating in the air. I shall nip it in the bud." | 35 | |
| 4953576906 | Narrative Poem | a non-dramatic poem which tells a story or presents a narrative, whether simple or complex, long or short. Example- "The Odyssey" | 36 | |
| 4953588594 | Octave | an eight-line stanza. Example- "For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams, Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea." (from "Annabel Lee") | 37 | |
| 4953617353 | Onomatopoeia | the use of words whose sound suggests their meaning. Example- "Bang!", "Hiss" | 38 | |
| 4953627110 | Oxymoron | a form of paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression. Example- "wise fool" | 39 | |
| 4953642933 | Paradox | a situation or action or feeling that appears to be contradictory but on inspection turns out to be true or makes sense. Example- "I can resist anything but temptation" | 40 | |
| 4953672393 | Parallelism | a similar grammatical structure within a line or lines of poetry. Example- "Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them." | 41 | |
| 4953689631 | Paraphrase | a restatement of an idea in such a way as to retain the meaning while changing the diction and form, for the purpose of clarity. Example- "Two families, equally dignified" is a paraphrase of "two houses, both alike in dignity." | 42 | |
| 4953742522 | Personification | a metaphor that gives inhuman objects human characteristics. Example- "the smiling sun lovingly warms me." | 43 | |
| 4953760949 | Poetic Foot | a group of syllables in verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it. Example- iambic= unaccented, accented | 44 | |
| 4953785920 | Pun | a play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings. Example- "They went and told the sexton and the sexton tolled the bell." | 45 | |
| 4953808732 | Quatrain | a four-line stanza with any combination of rhymes. Example- "Who knows how long I've loved you You know I love you still Will I wait a lonely lifetime If you want me to, I will" (from "I Will" by The Beatles) | 46 | |
| 4953832886 | 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. Example- "Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light... And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light" (from "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" by Dylan Thomas) | 47 | |
| 4953883312 | Rhyme | close similarity or identity of sound between accented syllables occupying corresponding positions in two or ore lines of verse. Example- "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall" | 48 | |
| 4953904434 | Rhyme Royal | a seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc. Example- "Buried beneath blood-shot baby doll eyes where drowns dark truths dwelling empty despair, finds five fraught faces from false idol lies clinging cold-coffins caused by cruel affair; Saddled by sorrow seen in mother's stare, washed while awaiting where water is filled pouring in porcelain planned to be killed" (from "Five Fraught Faces" by Phillip Garcia) | 49 | |
| 4953948250 | Rhythm | the recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables. Example- "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"' | 50 | |
| 4953977523 | Sarcasm | a type of irony in which a person appears to be praising something but is actually insulting it. Example- saying "nice job" when someone drops and breaks something | 51 | |
| 4953995771 | Satire | writing that seeks to arouse a reader's disapproval of an object by ridicule. Example- The Great Gatsby | 52 | |
| 4954015360 | Scansion | a system for describing the meter of a poem by identifying the number and the types of feet per line. Example- monometer- one foot per line dimeter= two feet per line trimeter= three feet per line tetrameter= four feet per line, etc | 53 | |
| 4954041962 | Sestet | a six-line stanza. Example- "Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all Behind low boughs the trees let down outside; And the sweet pang it cost me not to call And tell you that I saw does still abide, But 'tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof, For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof." (from "A Dream Pang" by Robert Frost) | 54 | |
| 4954067489 | Simile | a directly expressed comparison using comparison words such as "like" or "as". Example- "she's as fast as a cheetah" | 55 | |
| 4954083520 | Sonnet | normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem. Example- "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden | 56 | |
| 4954103360 | Stanza | usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme. Example- "He clasps the crag with crooked hands: Close to the sun it lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, it stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls." (from "The Eagle" by Alfred Lord Tennyson) | 57 | |
| 4954133850 | Strategy (rhetorical strategy) | the management of language for a specific effect. Example- anaphora, anadiplosis, hypophora | 58 | |
| 4954144695 | Structure | the arrangement of materials within a work; the relationship of the parts to the whole of the work; the logical divisions in a work. Example- lines, stanzas in poetry | 59 | |
| 4954166864 | Style | the mode of expression in language; the characteristic manner of expression of an author. Example- Hemingway's punctuated, powerful use of language | 60 | |
| 4954183328 | Symbol | something that is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else. Example- winter, cold, and darkness represent death | 61 | |
| 4954204425 | Synecdoche | a form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole. Example- infantry are often called "foot soldiers" | 62 | |
| 4954215137 | Syntax | the ordering of words into patterns or sentences. Example- "I brought the red ball to school." and "The red ball was brought to school by me." are two different types of syntax which each place emphasis on different parts of the sentence | 63 | |
| 4954243326 | Tercet | a stanza of three lines where each line ends with the same rhyme. Example- "The bright green leaves are turning, the forests look like burning; cold weather is returning." (from "Autumn" by Terry Hoffman) | 64 | |
| 4954282914 | Terza Rima | a three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc, etc. Example- Dante's "Divine Comedy" | 65 | |
| 4954291204 | Theme | the main thought expressed by a work. Example- alienation is a theme in Never Let Me Go | 66 | |
| 4954304778 | Tone | the manner in which the author expresses his or her attitude, the intonation of his or her voice. Example- The Great Gatsby has a cynical tone | 67 | |
| 4954332360 | Understatement | irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is.. Example- Macbeth kills Duncan and then tells Lenox, "'Twas a rough night" | 68 | |
| 4954357582 | Villanelle | a nineteen line poem divided into five tercets and a final quatrain. The rhyme scheme is usually aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa. Example- "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas | 69 |
