Terms : Hide Images
| 8702756306 | Alliteration | a figure of speech used to create rhythm and bring focus to a line or sentence in a piece of written material | 0 | |
| 8702758676 | Alliteration (example) | In Dante's Inferno, he uses the b sound to mimic the sound that bubbles make, "I saw it there, but I saw nothing in it, except the rising of the boiling bubbles". -Dante | 1 | |
| 8702763534 | Antithesis | a rhetorical device in which two opposite ideas are put together in a sentence to achieve a contrasting effect | 2 | |
| 8702788345 | Antithesis (example) | It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness..." is an example of ? from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. | 3 | |
| 8702815909 | Assonance | when two or more words, close to one another repeat the same vowel sound, but start with different consonant sounds | 4 | |
| 8702821691 | Assonance (example) | Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is among the oldest of living things. So old it is that no man knows how and why the first poems came" is one example of Carl Sandburg using ? in Early Moon. | 5 | |
| 8702829056 | Apostrophe | a figure of speech where the writer detaches himself from the reality and addresses an imaginary character in his speech | 6 | |
| 8702833635 | Apostrophe (example) | In The Star, Jane Taylor addresses an imaginary idea when she writes, "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky". | 7 | |
| 8702840466 | Cacophony | the use of words with sharp, harsh, hissing and unmelodious sounds primarily those of consonants to achieve desired results | 8 | |
| 8702842522 | Cacophony (example) | Lewis Carroll used ? in Alice in Wonderland when describing the Jabberwocky; "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe; all mimsy were the borogoves, an and the mome raths outgrabe". | 9 | |
| 8702923816 | Hyperbole | an exaggeration of ideas for the sake of emphasis | 10 | |
| 8702926472 | Hyperbole (example) | "I had to wait in the station for ten days-an eternity" is a ? from Joseph Conrad's novel The Heart of Darkness. | 11 | |
| 8702930760 | Imagery | the use of figurative language to represent objects, actions and ideas in such a way that it appeals to our physical senses | 12 | |
| 8702936659 | Imagery (example) | In Great Expectations, Pip describes the mroing dew using ? when he says, "It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window... Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass,.... On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy; and the marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village—a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there—was invisible to me until I was quite close under it". | 13 | |
| 8702941688 | Motif | an object or idea that repeats itself throughout a literary work | 14 | |
| 8702945357 | Motif (example) | In Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn we see the ? of superstitions when Jim's signs and omens predict the coming event. | 15 | |
| 8702950108 | Symbolism | an idea or quality that is given a symbolic meaning that is different from its literal sense | 16 | |
| 8702953716 | Symbolism (example) | In William Blake's Ah Sunflower, the sunflower represents human beings and the sun represents life; "Ah Sunflower, weary of time, who countest the steps of the sun; seeking after that sweet golden clime where the traveler's journey is done". | 17 | |
| 8702962478 | Synecdoche | a literary device in which a part of something represents the whole or it may use a whole to represent a part | 18 | |
| 8702965676 | Synecdoche (example) | Jonathan Swift uses ? when he writes "Prepar'd to scrub the entry and the stairs. The youth with broomy stumps began to trace" in The Description of the Morning. | 19 | |
| 8702978217 | Theme | a main idea or an underlying meaning of a literary work that may be stated directly or indirectly | 20 | |
| 8702980851 | Theme (example) | Alexander Dumas uses the ? of revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo. | 21 | |
| 8703001917 | Analogy | a comparison in which an idea or a thing is compared to another thing that is quite different from it | 22 | |
| 8703001918 | Analogy (example) | You are as annoying as nails on a chalkboard | 23 | |
| 8703032197 | Allegory | a figure of speech in which abstract ideas and principles are described in terms of characters, figures and events. It can be employed in prose and poetry to tell a story with a purpose of teaching an idea and a principle or explaining an idea or a principle. The objective of its use is to preach some kind of a moral lesson | 24 | |
| 8703034739 | Allegory (example) | "Animal Farm", written by George Orwell, is an ? that uses animals on a farm to describe the overthrow of the last of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and the Communist Revolution of Russia before WW I. The actions of the animals on the farm are used to expose the greed and corruption of the revolution. It also describes how powerful people can change the ideology of a society. | 25 | |
| 8703041846 | Anaphora | the deliberate repetition of the first part of the sentence in order to achieve an artistic effect | 26 | |
| 8703063595 | Anaphora (example) | Buying diapers for the baby, feeding the baby, playing with the baby: This is what your life is when you have a baby | 27 | |
| 8703080429 | Archetype | a typical character, an action, or a situation that seems to represent universal patterns of human nature | 28 | |
| 8703090854 | Archetype (example) | The hero, the mother, or the mentor | 29 | |
| 8703102642 | Blank verse | a literary device defined as un-rhyming verse written in iambic pentameter | 30 | |
| 8703114515 | Blank verse (example) | Something there is that doesn't love a wall. That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; | 31 | |
| 8703125175 | Couplet | a literary device that can be defined as having two successive rhyming lines in a verse, and has the same meter to form a complete thought | 32 | |
| 8703132175 | Couplet (example) | A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts, In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts... | 33 | |
| 8703148466 | Consonance | repetitive sounds produced by consonants within a sentence or phrase | 34 | |
| 8703152499 | Consonance (example) | Shelley sells shells by the seashore | 35 | |
| 8703157517 | Connotation | a meaning that is implied by a word apart from the thing which it describes explicitly | 36 | |
| 8703163450 | Connotation (example) | "Wall Street" literally means a street situated in Lower Manhattan, but ?-ly it refers to wealth and power | 37 | |
| 8703167730 | Denotation | literal or dictionary meanings of a word in contrast to its associated meanings | 38 | |
| 8703173313 | Denotation (example) | If you search for the meaning of the word "dove" in a dictionary, you will see that its meaning is "a type of pigeon, a wild and domesticated bird having a heavy body and short legs." In literature, however, you frequently see "dove" used to mean a symbol of peace. | 39 | |
| 8703183947 | Diction | style of speaking or writing, determined by the choice of words by a speaker or a writer | 40 | |
| 8703186441 | Diction (example) | "And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I don't know why they died, they just died. Something wrong with the soil possibly or maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn't the best. We complained about it. So we've got thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own little tree to plant and we've got these thirty dead trees. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks, it was depressing." The use of the words "died," "dead," "brown sticks," and "depressing" gives a gloomy tone to the passage. | 41 | |
| 8703197409 | Syntax | a set of rules in a language. It dictates how words from different parts of speech are put together in order to convey a complete thought | 42 | |
| 8703237105 | Syntax (example) | In casual conversations, we can simply say, "I cannot go out" to convey our inability to go out. P. J. Kavanagh's poem Beyond Decoration does not rely on merely stating a prosaic "I cannot go out." Rather, he shifts the syntax and says "Go out I cannot," which lays a much stronger emphasis on the inability to go out conveyed by the word "cannot." | 43 | |
| 8703251729 | Tone | an attitude of a writer toward a subject or an audience | 44 | |
| 8703251787 | Tone (example) | Father: "We are going on a vacation." Son: "That's great!!!" - The ? of son's response is very cheerful. Father: "We can't go on vacation this summer." Son: "Yeah, great! That's what I expected." - The son's tone is sarcastic. | 45 | |
| 8703287013 | Enjambment | to step over, or put legs across. In poetry it means moving over from one line to another without a terminating punctuation mark | 46 | |
| 8703290398 | Enjambment (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 asleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing." The first and last lines in the given poem have end marks, while the middle lines are ?. There is a flow of thought from one line to the next. | 47 | |
| 8703297300 | Extended metaphor | a comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of sentences in a paragraph, or lines in a poem | 48 | |
| 8703308760 | Extended metaphor (example) | But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief." Here again, Shakespeare has made use of ? by comparing "Juliet" with the "sun | 49 | |
| 8703328804 | Free verse | a literary device that can be defined as poetry that is free from limitations of regular meter or rhythm, and does not rhyme with fixed forms | 50 | |
| 8703335715 | Free verse (example) | Here's lookin at you Walt... A noiseless patient spider, I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them | 51 | |
| 8703353615 | Understatement | a figure of speech employed by writers or speakers to intentionally make a situation seem less important than it really is | 52 | |
| 8703375130 | Understatement (example) | You win 10 million dollars in a lottery. When you tell a news reporter "I am delighted," you are making ?. Similarly, suppose a team loses to its opponent 50 to 0 in a soccer match, and the captain of the team says in a post-match ceremony, "We did not do well," it is ? because he is trying to decrease the intensity of the loss. | 53 | |
| 8703395462 | Slant rhyme | a type of rhyme in which two words located at the end of a line of poetry themselves end in similar—but not identical—consonant sounds | 54 | |
| 8703398538 | Slant rhyme (example) | the words "pact" and slicked" could be slant rhymed. The term has expanded over time to include additional types of similar sounds | 55 | |
| 8703411568 | Internal rhyme | a poetic device that can be defined as metrical lines in which its middle words and its end words rhyme with one another | 56 | |
| 8703420506 | Internal rhyme (example) | Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore..." This is the most popular poem of Edgar Allen Poe, where he uses ?. Here we can see examples of ? where the words rhyme in the same lines, in separate lines, and in the proceeding lines. | 57 |
