Terms : Hide Images
| 4372957548 | acrostic | a word, phrase, or passage spelled out vertically by the first letters of a group of lines in sequence | 0 | |
| 4372962737 | alliteration | using the same consonant to start two or more stressed words in a phrase or verse line | 1 | |
| 4372969664 | allusion | a reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, or event | 2 | |
| 4372973102 | anthropomorphism | a figure of speech in which the poet characterizes an abstract thing or object as if it were a person | 3 | |
| 4372978295 | apostrophe | an address to a dead or absent person or an object as if he, she, or it were present | 4 | |
| 4372982698 | archetype | something in the world, and described in literature, that, according to the psychologist Karl Jung, manifests a dominant theme in the collective unconscious of human beings, such as The Journey, The Garden, The Mother-figure, The Scapegoat | 5 | |
| 4372992939 | assonance | the rhyming of a word with another in one or more of their accented vowels, but not in their consonants; sometimes called vowel rhyme | 6 | |
| 4372999506 | atmosphere | the mood or pervasive feeling suggested by a literary work | 7 | |
| 4373001983 | aubade | a love poem welcoming or lamenting the arrival of the dawn | 8 | |
| 4373004596 | ballad | a song or poem, often recited aloud, narrating a story, and passed down orally | 9 | |
| 4373007757 | blank verse | a line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter; examples that include blank verses in them are Shakespeare's plays, Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, and Robert Frost's meditative poems such as "Birches" | 10 | |
| 4373019874 | connotation | the associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning | 11 | |
| 4373024696 | couplet | a pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem; an example would be Shakespeare's sonnets that end in rhymed couplets, such as "For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings" | 12 | |
| 4373038611 | denotation | dictionary meaning of a word | 13 | |
| 4373041077 | diction | selection of words in a literary work; forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values | 14 | |
| 4373049485 | dramatic monologue | a poem in which an imagined speaker addresses a silent listener, usually not the reader; examples include Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" or T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" | 15 | |
| 4373062208 | elegy | a lyric poem that laments the dead; examples include Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" and W.H. Auden's "In Memory of William Butler Yeats" and " Funeral Blues" | 16 | |
| 4373074078 | enjambment | a run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next; differs from an end-stopped line in which the grammatical and logical sense is completed with the line; examples include the opening line of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" | 17 | |
| 4373092091 | epic | a long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero; typically chronicle the origins of civilization and embody its central values; examples include Homer's Iliad and Odyssey | 18 | |
| 4373101313 | figurative language | a form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words; examples include hyperbole, litotes, similes, metaphors, synecdoche, and metonymy | 19 | |
| 4373112866 | free verse | poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme; not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad | 20 | |
| 4373122404 | hyperbole | a figure of speech involving exaggeration | 21 | |
| 4373127599 | iamb | an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one; example to-DAY | 22 | |
| 4373135630 | image | a concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea; refers to the pattern of related details in a work | 23 | |
| 4373140859 | metaphor | a comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as | 24 | |
| 4373148625 | meter | the measure pattern of rhythmic accents in poems | 25 | |
| 4373151143 | metonymy | a figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea; an example "We have always remained loyal to the crown" | 26 | |
| 4373159538 | motif | a central or recurring image or action in a literary work that is shared by other works and may serve an overall theme | 27 | |
| 4373163971 | narrative poem | a poem that tells a story | 28 | |
| 4373166053 | ode | a formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea; often address an intense emotion at the onset of a personal crisis or celebrate an object or image that leads to revelation; examples include Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode," John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode to a Nightingale," and "To Autumn" | 29 | |
| 4373191831 | onomatopoeia | the use of words to imitate the sounds they describe; examples include "buzz" or "crack" | 30 | |
| 4373199577 | oxymoron | a figure of speech that brings together contradictory words for effect; examples include "jumbo shrimp," "deafening silence," and in John Milton's Book I of Paradise Lost, "darkness visible" | 31 | |
| 4373217007 | parody | a humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation | 32 | |
| 4373222873 | personification | the endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities | 33 | |
| 4373228630 | quatrain | a four-line stanza in a poem | 34 | |
| 4373232033 | rhyme | the matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words | 35 | |
| 4373235126 | rhythm | the recurrences of accent or stress in lines of verse | 36 | |
| 4373239450 | setting | the time and place of a literary work that establish its context | 37 | |
| 4373243272 | simile | a figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though; examples include "My love is like a red, red rose" | 38 | |
| 4373250963 | sonnet | a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter | 39 | |
| 4373253841 | stanza | a division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form, either with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter, or with variations from one stanza to another | 40 | |
| 4373269448 | symbol | an object or action in a literary work that means that more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself; examples include Frost's "The Road Not Taken" | 41 | |
| 4373276716 | synecdoche | a figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole; examples include "lend me a hand" | 42 | |
| 4373282046 | synesthesia | a blending or intermingling of different sense in description; examples include Emily Dickinson's "Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine," and from Modern Love: I by George Meredith "drink the pale drug of silence" | 43 | |
| 4373300788 | syntax | the organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue; examples include "whose woods these are I think I know" | 44 | |
| 4373312458 | theme | the general idea or ideas in a literary work; examples include Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men theme of loneliness | 45 | |
| 4377319577 | absolute | a word free from limitations or qualifications; examples include "best", "all", "unique", "perfect" | 46 | |
| 4377326291 | adage | a familiar proverb or wise saying | 47 | |
| 4377327931 | ad hominem argument | an argument attacking an individual's character rather than his or her position on an issue | 48 | |
| 4377332529 | allegory | a literary work in which characters, objects, or actions represent abstractions | 49 | |
| 4377335893 | analogy | a comparison of two different things that are similar in some way | 50 | |
| 4377339095 | anecdote | a brief narrative that focuses on a particular incident or event | 51 | |
| 4377342733 | antecedent | the word, phrase, or clause to which a pronoun refers | 52 | |
| 4377346060 | antithesis | a statement in which two opposing ideas are balanced | 53 | |
| 4377348349 | aphorism | a concise statement that expresses succinctly a general truth or idea, often using rhyme or balance | 54 | |
| 4377353535 | argument | a statement of the meaning or main point of a literary work | 55 | |
| 4377356357 | asyndeton | a construction in which elements are presented in a series without conjunctions | 56 | |
| 4377362984 | balanced sentence | a sentence in which words, phrases, or clauses are set off against each other to emphasize a contrast | 57 | |
| 4377367852 | bathos | insincere or overly sentimental quality of writing/speech intended to evoke pity | 58 | |
| 4377371362 | chiasmus | a statement consisting of two parallel parts in which the second part is structurally reversed ("Susan walked in, and out rushed Mary") | 59 | |
| 4377376931 | cliché | an expression that has been overused to the extent that its freshness has worn off | 60 | |
| 4377384283 | colloquialism | informal words or expressions not usually acceptable in formal writing | 61 | |
| 4377387504 | complex sentence | a sentence with one independent clause and at least one dependent clause | 62 | |
| 4377391918 | compound sentence | a sentence with two or more coordinate independent clauses, often joined by one or more conjunctions | 63 | |
| 4377398039 | conceit | a fanciful, particularly clever extended metaphor | 64 | |
| 4377400623 | concrete details | details that relate to or describe actual, specific things or events | 65 | |
| 4377404899 | cumulative sentence | a sentence in which the main independent clause is elaborated by the successive addition of modifying clauses or phrases | 66 | |
| 4377411310 | declarative sentence | a sentence that makes a statement or declaration | 67 | |
| 4377413875 | deductive reasoning | reasoning in which a conclusion is reached by stating a general principle and then applying that principle to a specific case (The sun rises every morning; therefore, the sun will rise on Tuesday morning) | 68 | |
| 4377422561 | dialect | a variety of speech characterized by its own particular grammar or pronunciation, often associated with a particular geographical region | 69 | |
| 4377429732 | dialogue | conversation between two or more people | 70 | |
| 4377431585 | didactic | having the primary purpose of teaching or instructing | 71 | |
| 4377437921 | dilemma | a situation that requires a person to decide between two equally attractive or equally unattractive alternatives | 72 | |
| 4377441960 | dissonance | harsh, inharmonious, or discordant sounds | 73 | |
| 4377444314 | ellipsis | the omission of a word or phrase which is grammatically necessary but can be deduced from the context ("Some people prefer cats; others, dogs") | 74 | |
| 4377450653 | epigram | a brief, pithy, and often paradoxical saying | 75 | |
| 4377453051 | epigraph | a saying or statement on the title page of a work, or used as a heading for a chapter or other section of a work | 76 | |
| 4377457948 | epiphany | a moment of sudden revelation or insight | 77 | |
| 4377460588 | epitaph | an inscription on a tombstone or burial place | 78 | |
| 4377464862 | epithet | a term used to point out a characteristic of a person | 79 | |
| 4377469588 | eulogy | a formal speech praising a person who has died | 80 | |
| 4377472019 | euphemism | an indirect, less offensive way of saying something that is considered unpleasant | 81 | |
| 4377480870 | expletive | an interjection to lend emphasis; sometimes, a profanity | 82 | |
| 4377485155 | fable | a brief story that leads to a moral, often using animals as characters | 83 | |
| 4377487899 | fantasy | a story that concerns an unreal world or contains unreal characters; may be merely whimsical, or it may present a serious point | 84 | |
| 4377504609 | flat character | a character who embodies a single quality and who does not develop in the course of a story | 85 | |
| 4377520581 | frame device | a story within a story; examples include Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in which the primary tales are told within the "frame story" of the pilgrimage to Canterbury | 86 | |
| 4377541681 | homily | a sermon, or a moralistic lecture | 87 | |
| 4377544539 | hubris | excessive pride or arrogance that results in the downfall of the protagonist of a tragedy | 88 | |
| 4377548287 | idiom | an expression in a given language that cannot be understood from the literal meaning of the words in the expression; or, a regional speech or dialect | 89 | |
| 4377556225 | inductive reasoning | deriving general principles from particular facts or instances ("Every cat I have ever seen has four legs; cats are four-legged animals") | 90 | |
| 4377564554 | invective | an intensely vehement, highly emotional verbal attack | 91 | |
| 4377567316 | juxtaposition | placing two elements side by side to present a comparison or contrast | 92 | |
| 4377570945 | legend | a narrative handed down from the past, containing historical elements and usually supernatural elements | 93 | |
| 4377574712 | limerick | light verse consisting of five lines of regular rhythm in which the first, second, and fifth lines (each consisting of three feet) rhyme, and the second and third lines (each consisting of two feet) rhyme | 94 | |
| 4377583444 | limited narrator | a narrator who presents the story as it is seen and understood by a single character and restricts information to what is seen, heard, thought, or felt by that one character | 95 | |
| 4377589988 | literary license | deviating from normal rules or methods in order to achieve a certain effect (ex intentional sentence fragments) | 96 | |
| 4377597071 | litotes | a type of understatement in which an idea is expressed by negating its opposite (describing a particularly horrific scene by saying, "It was not a pretty picture") | 97 | |
| 4377604046 | malapropism | the mistaken substitution of one word or another word that sounds similar ("The doctor wrote a subscription") | 98 | |
| 4377619885 | maxim | a concise statment, often offering advice, an adage | 99 | |
| 4377623189 | myth | a traditional story presenting supernatural characters and episodes that help explain natural events | 100 | |
| 4377630800 | omniscient narrator | a narrator who is able to know, see, and tell all, including the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters | 101 | |
| 4377634089 | parable | a simple story that illustrates a moral or religious lesson | 102 | |
| 4377639487 | parenthetical | a comment that interrupts the immediate subject, often to qualify or explain | 103 | |
| 4377642076 | pedantic | characterized by excessive display of learning or scholarship | 104 | |
| 4377645105 | philippic | a strong verbal denunciation | 105 | |
| 4377647719 | polysyndeton | the use, for rhetorical effect, of more conjunctions than is necessary or natural | 106 | |
| 4377651098 | rhetoric | the art of presenting ideas in a clear, effective, and persuasive manner | 107 | |
| 4377657732 | romantic | a term describing a character or literary work that reflects the characteristics of Romanticism, the literary movement beginning in the late 18th century that stressed emotion, imagination, and individualism | 108 | |
| 4377664201 | round character | a character who demonstrates some complexity and who develops or changes in the course of a work | 109 | |
| 4377668571 | satire | the use of humor to emphasize human weaknesses or imperfections in social institutions | 110 | |
| 4377671991 | simple sentence | a sentence consisting of one independent clause and no dependent clause | 111 | |
| 4377675397 | solecism | nonstandard grammatical usage, a violation of grammatical rules | 112 | |
| 4377682743 | surrealism | an artistic movement emphasizing the imagination and characterized by incongruous juxtapositions and lack of conscious control | 113 | |
| 4377688490 | syllepsis | a construction in which one word is used in two different senses ("After he threw the ball, he threw a fit") | 114 | |
| 4377694447 | syllogism | a three-part deductive argument in which a conclusion is based on a major premise and a minor premise ("All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal") | 115 | |
| 4377709420 | tautology | needless repetition which adds no meaning or understanding ("widow woman," "free gift") | 116 | |
| 4377712774 | trite | overused and hackneyed | 117 | |
| 4377718034 | jargon | the specialized language or vocabulary of a particular group or profession | 118 | |
| 4377720022 | vernacular | the everyday speech of a particular country or region, often involving nonstandard usage | 119 |
