Terms : Hide Images
| 4292709645 | Allegory | Story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people or events for abstract ideas or qualities. | 0 | |
| 4292709646 | Alliteration | Repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together. | 1 | |
| 4292709647 | Allusion | Reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or another branch of culture. An indirect reference to something (usually from literature, etc.). | 2 | |
| 4292711241 | Ambiguity | Deliberately suggesting two or more different, and sometimes conflicting meanings in a work. An event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way--this is done on purpose by the author, when it is not done on purpose, it is vagueness, and detracts from the work. | 3 | |
| 4292711242 | Analogy | Comparison made between two things to show how they are alike. | 4 | |
| 4292711243 | Anaphora | Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row. This is a deliberate form of repetition and helps make the writer's point more coherent. | 5 | |
| 4292713071 | Anastrophe | Inversion of the usual, normal, or logical order of the parts of a sentence. Purpose is rhythm or emphasis or euphony. It is a fancy word for the inversion. | 6 | |
| 4292713072 | Anecdote | Brief story, told to illustrate a point or serve as an example of something, often shows character of an individual. | 7 | |
| 4292713073 | Antagonist | Opponent who struggles against or blocks the hero, or protagonists, in a story. | 8 | |
| 4292716147 | Antimetabole | Repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order. example: "One should eat to live, not live to eat." | 9 | |
| 4292716148 | Antithesis | Balancing words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted, often by means of grammatical structure. | 10 | |
| 4292822240 | Antihero | Central character who lacks all the qualities traditionally associated with heroes. May lack courage, grace, intelligence, or moral scruples. | 11 | |
| 4292824796 | Anthropomorphism | Attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object. (Personification) | 12 | |
| 4292824797 | Aphorism | Brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life, or of a principle or accepted general truth. Also called maxim, or epigram. | 13 | |
| 4292826383 | Apostrophe | Calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place or thing, or a personified abstract idea. If the character is asking a god or goddess for inspiration, it is called an invocation. | 14 | |
| 4292826384 | Apposition | Placing in immediately succeeding order of two or more coordinate elements, the latter of which is an explanation, qualification, or modification of the first (often set off by a colon). | 15 | |
| 4292827835 | Assonance | The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds especially in words that are together. | 16 | |
| 4292827836 | Asyndeton | Commas used without conjunction to separate a series or words, thus emphasizing the parts equally. | 17 | |
| 4292829752 | Balance | Constructing a sentence so that both halves are about the same length and importance. Sentences can be unbalanced to serve a special effect as well. | 18 | |
| 4292832909 | Characterization | The process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character. | 19 | |
| 4292832910 | Indirect Characterization | The author reveals to the reader what the character is like by describing how the character looks and dresses, by letting the reader hear what the character says, by revealing the character's private thoughts and feelings, by revealing the characters effect in other people (showing how other characters feel or behave toward the character), or by showing the character in action. (More common in Modern Literature) | 20 | |
| 4292834869 | Direct Characterization | The author tells us directly what the character is like. (More common in Romantic Style Literature) | 21 | |
| 4292834870 | Static Character | One who does not change much in the course of a story. | 22 | |
| 4292909858 | Dynamic Character | One who changes in some important way as a result of the story's action. | 23 | |
| 4292913181 | Flat Character | Has only one or two personality traits. They are one dimensional. Can be summed up in one phrase. | 24 | |
| 4292919121 | Round Character | Has more dimensions to their personalities--they are complex, just as real people are. | 25 | |
| 4292922863 | Chiasmus | In poetry, a type of rhetorical balance in which the second part in syntactically balanced against the first, but with the parts reversed. In prose, this is called antimetabole. | 26 | |
| 4292930017 | Cliche | A word or phrase, often a figure of speech, that has become lifeless because of overuse. | 27 | |
| 4292938558 | Colloquialism | A word or phrase in everyday use in conversation and informal writing but is inappropriate in formal situations. | 28 | |
| 4292942399 | Comedy | In general, a story that ends with a happy resolution of the conflicts faced by the main character or characters. | 29 | |
| 4292947206 | Conceit | An elaborate metaphor that compares two things that are startlingly different. Often an extended metaphor. | 30 | |
| 4292953053 | Confessional Poetry | A twentieth century term used to describe poetry that uses intimate material from the poet's life. | 31 | |
| 4299624517 | Conflict | The struggle between opposing forces or characters in a story. | 32 | |
| 4299626278 | External Conflict | Conflicts can exist between two people, between a person and nature or a machine or between a person and a whole society. | 33 | |
| 4299631872 | Internal Conflict | A conflict can be internal, involving opposing forces within a person's mind. | 34 | |
| 4299634882 | Connotation | The associations and emotional overtones that have become attached to a word or a phrase, in addition to its strict dictionary definition. | 35 | |
| 4299642282 | Couplet | Two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry. | 36 | |
| 4299644098 | Dialect | A way of speaking that is characteristic of a certain social group or of the inhabitants of a certain geographical area. | 37 | |
| 4299648156 | Diction | A speaker or writer's choice of words. | 38 | |
| 4299649204 | Didactic | Form of fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model of correct behavior or thinking. | 39 | |
| 4299651753 | Elegy | A poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died. | 40 | |
| 4299689928 | Eulogy | A great praise or commendation, a laudatory speech, often about someone who has died. | 41 | |
| 4299657951 | Epanalepsis | Device of repetition in which the same expression (single word or phrase) is repeated both at the beginning and at the end of the line, clause, or sentence. | 42 | |
| 4299663526 | Epic | A long narrative poem, written in heightened language, with recounts the deeds of a heroic character who embodies the values of a particular society. | 43 | |
| 4299668033 | Epigraph | A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme. | 44 | |
| 4299671721 | Epistrophe | Device of repetition in which the same expression (single word or phrase) is repeated at the end of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences (opposite of anaphora). | 45 | |
| 4299677972 | Epithet | An adjective or adjective phrase applied to a person or thing that is frequently used to emphasize a characteristic quality. | 46 | |
| 4299682218 | Homeric Epithet | A compound adjective used with a person or thing. ex: "Swift-footed Achilles". | 47 | |
| 4299693282 | Essay | A short piece of nonfiction prose in which the writer discusses some aspect of a subject. Types of Essays Persuasion, Argument, Casual Relationship, Description, Exposition, Narrative | 48 | |
| 4299701216 | Explication | Act of interpreting or discovering the meaning of a text, usually involves close reading and special attention to figurative language. | 49 | |
| 4299705215 | Fable | A very short story told in prose or poetry that teaches a practical lesson about how to succeed in life. | 50 | |
| 4299707897 | Farce | A type of comedy in which ridiculous and often stereotyped characters are involved in silly, far-fetched situations. | 51 | |
| 4299711960 | Figurative Language | Words which are inaccurate if interpreted literally, but are used to describe. Similes and metaphors are common forms. | 52 | |
| 4299715461 | Flashback | A scene that interrupts the normal chronological sequence or events in a story to depict something that happened at an earlier time. | 53 | |
| 4299719764 | Foil | A character who acts as contrast to another character. Often a funny side kick to the dashing hero, or a villain contrasting the hero. | 54 | |
| 4299724345 | Foreshadowing | The use of hints and clues to suggest what will happen later in a plot. | 55 | |
| 4299726291 | Free Verse | Poetry that does not conform to a regular meter or rhyme scheme. | 56 | |
| 4299728188 | Hyperbole | A figure or speech that uses an incredible exaggeration or overstatement for effect. | 57 | |
| 4299731114 | Hypotactic | Sentence marked by the use of connecting words between clauses or sentences, explicitly showing the logical or other relationships between them. | 58 | |
| 4299735562 | Imagery | The use of language to evoke a picture or a concrete sensation of a person, a place, a things, or an experience. | 59 | |
| 4299738924 | Inversion | The reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase. | 60 | |
| 4299740823 | Irony | A discrepancy between appearances and reality. | 61 | |
| 4299745642 | Verbal Irony | Occurs when someone says one thing but really means something else. | 62 | |
| 4299748450 | Situational Irony | Takes place when there is a discrepancy between what is expected to happen, or what would be appropriate to happen, and what really does happen. | 63 | |
| 4299754456 | Dramatic Irony | Is so called because it is often used on stage. A character in the play or story thinks one thing is true, but the audience or reader knows better. | 64 | |
| 4299761627 | Juxtaposition | Poetic and rhetorical device in which normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are placed next to one another, creating an effect of surprise and wit. | 65 | |
| 4299768904 | Litotes | A form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form. | 66 | |
| 4299772131 | Local Color | A term applied to fiction or poetry which tends to place special emphasis on a particular setting, including its customs, clothing, dialect and landscape. | 67 | |
| 4299777422 | Loose Sentence | One in which the main clause comes first, followed by further dependent grammatical units. | 68 | |
| 4299782006 | Lyric Poem | A poem that does not tell a story but expresses the personal feelings or thought of the speaker. | 69 | |
| 4299787517 | Metaphor | A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without the use of specific words of comparison as "like," "as," "than," or "resembles." | 70 | |
| 4299793647 | Implied Metaphor | Does not state explicitly the two terms of comparison. | 71 | |
| 4299796717 | Extended Metaphor | A metaphor that is extended or developed as far as the writer wants to take it. | 72 | |
| 4299799743 | Dead Metaphor | A metaphor that has been used so often that the comparison is no longer vivid. | 73 | |
| 4299807438 | Mixed Metaphor | A metaphor that has gotten out of control and mixes its terms so that they are visually or imaginatively incompatible. | 74 | |
| 4299811559 | Metonymy | A figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing, is referred to by something closely associated with it. | 75 | |
| 4299814126 | Mood | An atmosphere created by a writer's diction and the details selected. | 76 | |
| 4299816959 | Motif | A recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation used throughout a word, unifying the work by tying the current situation to previous ones, or new ideas to the theme. | 77 | |
| 4299823454 | Motivation | The reasons for a character's behavior. | 78 | |
| 4299826183 | Onomatopoeia | The use of words whose sounds echo their sense. | 79 | |
| 4299827577 | Oxymoron | A figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase. | 80 | |
| 4299830196 | Parable | A relatively short story that teaches a moral, or lesson about how to lead a good life. | 81 | |
| 4299832103 | Paradox | A statement that appears self-contradictory, but reveals a kind of truth. | 82 | |
| 4299834977 | Koan | A paradox used in Zen Buddhism to gain intuitive knowledge. | 83 | |
| 4299836961 | Parallel Structure | The repetition of words or phrases that have similar grammatical structures. | 84 | |
| 4299839868 | Paratactic Sentence | Simply juxtaposes clauses or sentences. | 85 | |
| 4299843749 | Parody | A work that makes fun of another work by imitating some aspect of the writer's style. | 86 | |
| 4299847078 | Periodic | A sentence that places the main idea or central complete thought at the end of a sentence, after all introductory elements. | 87 | |
| 4299850679 | Personification | A figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes. | 88 | |
| 4299853040 | Plot | The series of related events in a story or play, sometimes called the storyline. | 89 | |
| 4299856327 | Point of view | The vantage point from which the writer tells the story. First Person Point of View Third Person Point of View Omniscient Point of View (all knowing narrator) Objective Point of View | 90 | |
| 4299866489 | Polysyndeton | A sentence which uses a conjunction with NO commas to separate the items in a series. | 91 | |
| 4299869475 | Protagonist | The central character in a story, the one who initiates or drives the action. | 92 | |
| 4299872628 | Pun | A "play on words" based on multiple meanings of a single word or on words that sound alike but mean different things. | 93 | |
| 4299875206 | Quatrain | A poem consisting of four lines, or four lines of a poem that can be considered a unit. | 94 | |
| 4299877674 | Refrain | A word, phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated, for effect, several times in a poem. | 95 | |
| 4299880947 | Rhythm | A rise and fall of the voice produced by the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language. | 96 | |
| 4299884892 | Rhetoric | Art of effective communication, especially persuasive discourse. | 97 | |
| 4299887178 | Rhetorical Question | A question asked for the effect, and not actually requiring an answer. | 98 | |
| 4299889146 | Romance | In general, a story in which an idealized hero or heroine undertakes a quest and is successful. | 99 | |
| 4300972722 | Satire | A type of writing that ridicules the shortcoming of people or institutions in an attempt to bring about a change. | 100 | |
| 4300976342 | Simile | A figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two unlike things, using words such as "like," "as," "than," or "resembles." | 101 | |
| 4300981727 | Soliloquy | A long speech made by a character in a play while no other characters are on stage. | 102 | |
| 4300985193 | Stereotype | A fixed idea or conception of a character or an idea which does not allow for any individuality, often based on religious, social, or racial prejudices. | 103 | |
| 4300998493 | Stream of Consciousness | A style of writing that portrays the inner (often chaotic) workings of a character's mind. | 104 | |
| 4301000188 | Style | The distinctive way in which a writer uses language: a writer's distinctive use of diction, tone, and syntax. | 105 | |
| 4301004115 | Suspense | A feeling of uncertainty and curiosity about what will happen next in a story. | 106 | |
| 4301006062 | Symbol | A person, place, thing, or event that has meaning in itself and that also stands for something more than itself. | 107 | |
| 4301008165 | Synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part represents the whole. | 108 | |
| 4301018847 | Syntactic Fluency | Ability to create a variety of sentence structures, appropriately complex and/or simple and varied in length. | 109 | |
| 4301023797 | Syntactic Permutation | Sentence structures that are extraordinarily complex and involved. Often difficult for a reader to follow. | 110 | |
| 4301025772 | Tall Tale | An outrageously exaggerated, humorous story that is obviously unbelievable. | 111 | |
| 4301036765 | Telegraphic Sentence | A sentence shorter than five words in length. | 112 | |
| 4301037569 | Theme | The insight about human life that is revealed in a literary work. | 113 | |
| 4301038444 | Tone | The attitude a writer takes toward the subject of a work, the characters in it, or the audience, revealed through diction, figurative language, and organization. | 114 | |
| 4301040973 | Tragedy | In general, a story in which a heroic character either dies or comes to some other unhappy end. | 115 | |
| 4301048139 | Tricolon | Sentence of three parts of equal importance and length, usually three independent clauses. | 116 | |
| 4301050131 | Understatement | A statement that says less than what is meant. | 117 | |
| 4301051286 | Unity | Unified parts of the writing are related to one central idea or organizing principle. Unity is dependent upon coherence. | 118 | |
| 4301066532 | Vernacular | The language spoken by the people who live in a particular locality. | 119 |
