Terms : Hide Images
| 5794519327 | Alliteration | The repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series of words within a phrase or verse line. Example: "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood." | 0 | |
| 5794526283 | Allusion | A brief, intentional reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, event, or movement. | 1 | |
| 5794528249 | Amphibrach | A stressed syllable surrounded by two unstressed syllables. (This is a metrical foot) Examples: "another," "uncommon," "instead of." | 2 | |
| 5794535115 | Anapest | A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable. Examples: "underfoot" and "overcome" (Metrical Foot) | 3 | |
| 5794539966 | Anaphora | The repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic effect. Example: "I have a dream" repetition | 4 | |
| 5794541625 | Antithesis | Contrasting or combining two terms, phrases, or clauses with opposite meanings. Example: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." | 5 | |
| 5794611135 | Apostrophe | An address to a dead or absent person, or personification as if he or she were present. | 6 | |
| 5794612586 | Archetype | A basic model from which copies are made; a prototype. AKA our basic knowledge from the unconscious | 7 | |
| 5794620708 | Assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants; sometimes called vowel rhyme. Example: "Try to light the fire" | 8 | |
| 5794645368 | Blank Verse | Unrhyming iambic pentameter, also called heroic verse. This 10-syllable line is the predominant rhythm of traditional English dramatic and epic poetry, as it is considered the closest to English speech patterns. | 9 | |
| 5794646715 | Cacophony | Harsh or discordant sounds, often the result of repetition and combination of consonants within a group of words. Example: "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!" | 10 | |
| 5794654963 | Cadence | The patterning of rhythm in natural speech, or in poetry without a distinct meter (i.e., free verse). | 11 | |
| 5794657659 | Caesura | A stop or pause in a metrical line, often marked by punctuation or by a grammatical boundary, such as a phrase or clause. | 12 | |
| 5794660144 | Catalexis | Omission or incompleteness usually in the last foot of a line in metrical verse Ex: Take the bride and take the groom out, Slap the child and clear the room out. -- Take the bride and take the groom, Slap the child and clear the room. | 13 | |
| 5794668665 | Chiasmus | Repetition of any group of verse elements (including rhyme and grammatical structure) in reverse order, such as the rhyme scheme ABBA. Ex: "But many that are first / Shall be last, / And many that are last / Shall be first"; | 14 | |
| 5794673058 | Closed Form | A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern. Example: Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though. He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. | 15 | |
| 5794682870 | Common Measure | A quatrain that rhymes ABAB and alternates four-stress and three-stress iambic lines. | 16 | |
| 5794685568 | Conceit | An often unconventional, logically complex, or surprising metaphor whose delights are more intellectual than sensual. | 17 | |
| 5794687515 | Concrete | Verse that emphasizes nonlinguistic elements in its meaning, such as a typeface that creates a visual image of the topic. |  | 18 |
| 5794694424 | Connotation | The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. | 19 | |
| 5794695922 | Consonance | A resemblance in sound between two words, or an initial rhyme. This can also refer to shared consonants, whether in sequence ("bed" and "bad") or reversed ("bud" and "dab" | 20 | |
| 5794702385 | Controlling Image | An image a poet uses to carry forward the sense of the poem. | 21 | |
| 5794705970 | Couplet | A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length. | 22 | |
| 5794706780 | Dactyl | A metrical foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables; the words "poetry" and "basketball" | 23 | |
| 5794708005 | Dimeter | A line of verse composed of two feet. Example: "Some go local / Some go express / Some can't wait / To answer Yes," | 24 | |
| 5803901225 | Dirge | 25 | ||
| 5800075818 | Dirge | A brief hymn or song of lamentation and grief; it was typically composed to be performed at a funeral. | 26 | |
| 5800076661 | Dissonance | A disruption of harmonic sounds or rhythms. | 27 | |
| 5800082194 | Double Entendre | A phrase or a figure of speech that might have multiple senses, interpretations or two different meanings or that could be understood in two different ways. | 28 | |
| 5800085864 | Dramatic Monologue | A poem in which an imagined speaker addresses a silent listener, usually not the reader. | 29 | |
| 5800088697 | Elegy | In traditional English poetry, it is often a melancholy poem that laments its subject's death but ends in consolation. | 30 | |
| 5800096594 | End Rhyme | The rhyming of the final syllables of a line. | 31 | |
| 5800104522 | End-Stopped Line | A metrical line ending at a grammatical boundary or break—such as a dash or closing parenthesis—or with punctuation such as a colon, a semicolon, or a period. | 32 | |
| 5800108208 | Enjambment | The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation; the opposite of end-stopped. | 33 | |
| 5800109003 | Epic | A long narrative poem in which a heroic protagonist engages in an action of great mythic or historical significance. | 34 | |
| 5800118998 | Epigram | A pithy, often witty, poem. Example: This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained. | 35 | |
| 5800123075 | Euphemism | A polite, indirect expressions which replace words and phrases considered harsh and impolite or which suggest something unpleasant. Example: Croak = Death | 36 | |
| 5800129387 | Euphony | The use of words and phrases that are distinguished as having a wide range of noteworthy melody or loveliness in the sounds they create. | 37 | |
| 5800134830 | Exact Rhyme | A form of rhyme between two words or phrases, satisfying the following conditions: The stressed vowel sound in both words must be identical, as well as any subsequent sounds. For example, "sky" and "high"; "skylight" and "highlight". | 38 | |
| 5800142049 | Explication | A relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationships of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem. | 39 | |
| 5800142420 | External Rhyme | A pattern of words that rhyme on the "outside." edge of the poem - the last syllable in the last word of each line in a stanza. | 40 | |
| 5800143753 | Eye Rhyme | Rhymes only when spelled, not when pronounced. For example, "through" and "rough. | 41 | |
| 5800143754 | Feminine Rhyme | The rhyming of one or more unstressed syllables, such as "dicing" and "enticing." | 42 | |
| 5800144918 | Figurative Language | Using figures of speech to be more effective, persuasive and impactful. | 43 | |
| 5800144919 | Foot | The basic unit of measurement of accentual-syllabic meter. Usually contains one stressed syllable and at least one unstressed syllable. | 44 | |
| 5800145474 | Free Verse | Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech. | 45 | |
| 5800145475 | Haiku | A Japanese verse form of three unrhyming lines in five, seven, and five syllables. | 46 | |
| 5800146215 | Heroic Couplet | A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length written in iambic pentameter and features prominently in the work of 17th- and 18th-century didactic and satirical poets. | 47 | |
| 5800146216 | Hyperbole | A figure of speech composed of a striking exaggeration. | 48 | |
| 5800146993 | Iamb | A metrical foot consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. Ex: "unite" and "provide" | 49 | |
| 5800146994 | Image | The ideas pictured in a reader's mind created by the writer. | 50 | |
| 5800147005 | Imagery | Elements of a poem that invoke any of the five senses to create a set of mental images. | 51 | |
| 5800148544 | In media res | Describes a narrative that begins, not at the beginning of a story, but somewhere in the middle — usually at some crucial point in the action | 52 | |
| 5800148545 | Internal Rhyme | Rhyme within a single line of verse; When a word from the middle of a line is rhymed with a word at the end of the line. | 53 | |
| 5800149345 | Limerick | A fixed light-verse form of five generally anapestic lines rhyming AABBA. Example: "An infatuated man from Dover, was left by his imaginary lover. He pulled his hair, in sheer despair, forgetting a wig was his cover." | 54 | |
| 5800149954 | Litotes | A deliberate understatement for effect; the opposite of hyperbole. | 55 | |
| 5801378015 | Lyric | Originally a composition meant for musical accompaniment. The term refers to a short poem in which the poet, the poet's persona, or another speaker expresses personal feelings. | 56 | |
| 5801378512 | Masculine Rhyme | A rhyme of final stressed syllables (e.g., blow / flow, confess / redress ). | 57 | |
| 5801379576 | Measure | A poetic rhythm measured by temporal quantity or accent | 58 | |
| 5801379577 | Meiosis | The use of understatement to highlight a point or explain a situation or to understate a response used to enhance the effect of a dramatic moment. | 59 | |
| 5801380062 | Metaphor | A comparison that is made directly. Example: John Keats's "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" | 60 | |
| 5801380063 | Metaphysical Poets | A group of 17th-century poets whose works are marked by philosophical exploration, colloquial diction, ingenious conceits, irony, and metrically flexible lines. | 61 | |
| 5801380574 | Meter | The rhythmical pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse. | 62 | |
| 5801380999 | Metonymy | A figure of speech in which a related term is substituted for the word itself. Often the substitution is based on a material, causal, or conceptual relation between things. For example, the British monarchy is often referred to as the Crown. | 63 | |
| 5801381682 | Narrative Ballad | A popular narrative song passed down orally. In the English tradition, it usually follows a form of rhymed (abcb) quatrains alternating four-stress and three-stress lines. | 64 | |
| 5801381683 | Near Rhyme | Rhyming in which the words sound the same but do not rhyme perfectly. Example "shape/keep" | 65 | |
| 5801382411 | Octave | An eight-line stanza or poem. | 66 | |
| 5801382412 | Ode | A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea. Its stanza forms vary. | 67 | |
| 5801383436 | Onomatopoeia | A figure of speech in which the sound of a word imitates its sense (for example, "choo-choo," "hiss," or "buzz"). | 68 | |
| 5801383437 | Open Form | A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure. | 69 | |
| 5801384170 | Oxymoron | A figure of speech that brings together contradictory words for effect, such as "jumbo shrimp" and "deafening silence." | 70 | |
| 5801384171 | Paradox | As a figure of speech, it is a seemingly self-contradictory phrase or concept that illuminates a truth. "Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is." | 71 | |
| 5801384928 | Parallelism | The use of successive verbal constructions in poetry or prose that correspond in grammatical structure, sound, meter, meaning, etc. | 72 | |
| 5801384929 | Paronomasia | A play on words; a pun. | 73 | |
| 5801385583 | Pentameter | A line made up of five feet. It is the most common metrical line in English. | 74 | |
| 5801385584 | Persona | A dramatic character, distinguished from the poet, who is the speaker of a poem | 75 | |
| 5801386466 | Personification | A figure of speech in which the poet describes an abstraction, a thing, or a nonhuman form as if it were a person | 76 | |
| 5801386467 | Prosody | The principles of metrical structure in poetry. | 77 | |
| 5801387268 | Pyrrhic | A metrical unit consisting of two unstressed syllables, in accentual-syllabic verse, or two short syllables, in quantitative meter. EX: "To a green thought in a green shade." | 78 | |
| 5801387269 | Quatrain | A four-line stanza, rhyming. | 79 | |
| 5801387878 | Refrain | A phrase or line repeated at intervals within a poem, especially at the end of a stanza. | 80 | |
| 5801387879 | Repetition | A literary device that repeats the same words or phrases a few times to make an idea clearer. | 81 | |
| 5801388725 | Rhythm | An audible pattern in verse established by the intervals between stressed syllables. | 82 | |
| 5801388726 | Rhyme | The repetition of syllables, typically at the end of a verse line. | 83 | |
| 5801390019 | Rhyme Scheme | The ordered pattern of rhymes at the ends of the lines of a poem or verse. | 84 | |
| 5801390020 | Satire | A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. | 85 | |
| 5801390579 | Scansion | The analysis of the metrical patterns of a poem by organizing its lines into feet of stressed and unstressed syllables and showing the major pauses, if any. | 86 | |
| 5801391299 | Sestet | A six-line stanza, or the final six lines of a 14-line Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. | 87 | |
| 5801391300 | Sonnet | A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme | 88 | |
| 5801392054 | Spondee | A metrical foot consisting of two accented syllables. Example: With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him. | 89 | |
| 5801392055 | English Sonnet | A sonnet consisting of three quatrains and a couplet with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg | 90 | |
| 5801392497 | Italian Sonnet | A sonnet consisting of an octave rhyming abba abba and a sestet rhyming in any of various patterns | 91 | |
| 5801392498 | Slant Rhyme | Rhyming in which the words sound the same but do not rhyme perfectly. Example "shape/keep" | 92 | |
| 5801393753 | Sight Rhyme | Rhymes only when spelled, not when pronounced. For example, "through" and "rough. | 93 | |
| 5801394286 | Simile | Comparison using like or as | 94 | |
| 5801394575 | Stanza | A grouping of lines separated from others in a poem. In modern free verse, the stanza, like a prose paragraph, can be used to mark a shift in mood, time, or thought. | 95 | |
| 5801394576 | Stress | A syllable uttered in a higher pitch—or with greater emphasis—than others. | 96 | |
| 5801394577 | Symbol | Something in the world of the senses, including an action, that reveals or is a sign for something else, often abstract or otherworldly. | 97 | |
| 5801395250 | Synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole (for example, "I've got wheels" for "I have a car," or a description of a worker as a "hired hand") | 98 | |
| 5801395251 | Synesthesia | In description, a blending or intermingling of different sense modalities. | 99 | |
| 5801396332 | Tenor | What's getting reimagined by the other part of the metaphor | 100 | |
| 5801396726 | Tetrameter | A line made up of four feet. | 101 | |
| 5801396727 | Tone | The poet's attitude toward the poem's speaker, reader, and subject matter, as interpreted by the reader. | 102 | |
| 5801397267 | Trimeter | A line of three metrical feet. | 103 | |
| 5801397268 | Triple Rhyme | A feminine rhyme involving one stressed and two unstressed syllables in each rhyming line. | 104 | |
| 5801397665 | Trochee | A metrical foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable. EX: "garden" and "highway." | 105 | |
| 5801398265 | True Rhyme | A form of rhyme between two words or phrases, satisfying the following conditions: The stressed vowel sound in both words must be identical, as well as any subsequent sounds. For example, "sky" and "high"; "skylight" and "highlight". | 106 | |
| 5801400098 | Understatement | A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration. The last line of Frost's "Birches" illustrates this literary device: "One could do worse than be a swinger of birches." | 107 | |
| 5801400099 | Villanelle | A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain. | 108 | |
| 5801400570 | Virgule | Separates lines of poetry that are quoted in run-on fashion in the text | 109 | |
| 5801401376 | Volta | Italian word for "turn." AKA The climax of a sonnet. | 110 |
