Terms : Hide Images
| 13654740235 | abstract | a typically complex style of writing that discusses intangible qualities like good and evil and seldom uses examples to support its points | 0 | |
| 13654740236 | academic | a dry and theoretical writing style | 1 | |
| 13654740237 | accent | the stressed portion of a word | 2 | |
| 13654740238 | aesthetic | appealing to the senses | 3 | |
| 13654740239 | allegory | a story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside the tale itself; ex. The Ant and the Grasshopper | 4 | |
| 13654740240 | alliteration | repetition of initial consonant sounds | 5 | |
| 13654740241 | allusion | a reference to another work or famous figure | 6 | |
| 13654740242 | anachronism | misplaced in time | 7 | |
| 13654740243 | analogy | a comparison, usually involving two or more symbolic parts to clarify an action or relationship | 8 | |
| 13654740244 | anecdote | a short narrative | 9 | |
| 13654740245 | antecedent | the word, phrase, or clause that a pronoun refers to or replaces | 10 | |
| 13654740246 | anthromorphism | when inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behavior, or motivation | 11 | |
| 13654740247 | anticlimax | when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect | 12 | |
| 13654740248 | antihero | a protagonist who is markedly unheroic | 13 | |
| 13654740249 | aphorism | a short and usually witty saying | 14 | |
| 13654740250 | apostrophe | an address to someone not present or to a personified object or idea | 15 | |
| 13654740251 | archaism | the use of deliberately old-fashioned language | 16 | |
| 13654740252 | aside | a speech or comment made by an actor to the audience, as though momentarily stepping outside of the action on stage | 17 | |
| 13654740253 | aspect | a trait or characteristic | 18 | |
| 13654740254 | assonance | the repeated use of vowel sounds | 19 | |
| 13654740255 | atmosphere | the emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene | 20 | |
| 13654740256 | ballad | a long, narrative poem usually in very regular meter and rhyme; typically has a naive folksy quality | 21 | |
| 13654740257 | bathos | writing that strains for grandeur it can't support; writing that tries to elicit tears from every little hiccup | 22 | |
| 13654740258 | pathos | writing that evokes feelings of dignified pity and sympathy | 23 | |
| 13654740259 | black humor | use of disturbing themes in comedy | 24 | |
| 13654740260 | bombast | pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language | 25 | |
| 13654740261 | burlesque | broad parody, one that takes a style or form such as tragic drama and exaggerates it into ridiculousness | 26 | |
| 13654740262 | cacophony | deliberately harsh, awkward sounds | 27 | |
| 13654740263 | cadence | the beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense | 28 | |
| 13654740264 | canto | the name for a section division in a long work of poetry | 29 | |
| 13654740265 | caricature | a portrait that exaggerates a facet of personality | 30 | |
| 13654740266 | catharsis | the cleansing of emotion an audience member experiences having lived vicariously through the experiences presented on stage | 31 | |
| 13654740267 | chorus | the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it | 32 | |
| 13654740268 | classic | can mean either typical or an accepted masterpiece | 33 | |
| 13654740269 | classical | the arts of ancient Greece and Rome and the qualities of those arts | 34 | |
| 13654740270 | coinage (neologism) | a new word, usually invented on the spot | 35 | |
| 13654740271 | colloquialism | a word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "schoolbook" English | 36 | |
| 13654740272 | complex | more than one possibility in the meaning of words | 37 | |
| 13654740273 | conceit | a startling or unusual metaphor, one developed and expanded upon over several lines | 38 | |
| 13654740274 | controlling metaphor | when conceit dominates and shapes an entire work | 39 | |
| 13654740275 | connotation | what words suggest or imply | 40 | |
| 13654740276 | denotation | the literal meaning of a word | 41 | |
| 13654740277 | consonance | the repetition of consonant sounds within words | 42 | |
| 13654740278 | couplet | a pair of lines that end in rhyme | 43 | |
| 13654740279 | decorum | when a character's speech must be styled according to his/her social station and in accordance with the ocassion | 44 | |
| 13654740280 | diction | choice of words | 45 | |
| 13654740281 | syntax | the ordering and structuring of words | 46 | |
| 13654740282 | dirge | a song for the dead | 47 | |
| 13654740283 | dissonance | grating of incompatible sounds | 48 | |
| 13654740284 | doggerel | crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme | 49 | |
| 13654740285 | dramatic irony | when the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not | 50 | |
| 13654740286 | dramatic monologue | when a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience | 51 | |
| 13654740287 | elegy | a type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner | 52 | |
| 13654740288 | elements | the basic techniques of each genre of literature | 53 | |
| 13654740289 | enjambment | the continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause | 54 | |
| 13654740290 | epic | a very long narrative poem on a serious theme and in a dignified style; typically glorious or profound subject matter | 55 | |
| 13654740291 | mock epic | a parody form of an epic that deals with mundane events and ironically treats them as being worthy of epic poetry | 56 | |
| 13654740292 | epitaph | lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place | 57 | |
| 13654740293 | euphemism | a word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh reality | 58 | |
| 13654740294 | euphony | a blend of harmonious sounds | 59 | |
| 13654740295 | explicit | to say or write something directly and clearly | 60 | |
| 13654763127 | anaphora | the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses | 61 | |
| 13654740296 | farce | a funny play, a comedy | 62 | |
| 13654740297 | feminine rhyme | lines rhymed by their final two syllables; ex. running and gunning | 63 | |
| 13654740298 | foil | a secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character, usually by contrast | 64 | |
| 13654740299 | foot | the basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry | 65 | |
| 13654740300 | foreshadowing | an event or statement in a narrative that suggests a larger event that comes later | 66 | |
| 13654740301 | free verse | poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern | 67 | |
| 13654740302 | genre | a subcategory of literature | 68 | |
| 13654740303 | gothic | a style of writing that is characterized by elements of fear, horror, death, and gloom, as well as romantic elements, such as nature, individuality, and very high emotion | 69 | |
| 13654740304 | hubris | the excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall | 70 | |
| 13654740305 | hyperbole | exaggeration or deliberate overstatement | 71 | |
| 13654740306 | implicit | to say or write something that suggests and implies but never says it directly or clearly | 72 | |
| 13654740307 | in medias res | in the midst of things | 73 | |
| 13654740308 | interior monologue | writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside a character's head; more coherent than stream of consciousness | 74 | |
| 13654740309 | inversion | switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase | 75 | |
| 13654740310 | irony | a statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean | 76 | |
| 13654772592 | juxtaposition | placement of two things closely together to emphasize comparisons or contrasts | 77 | |
| 13654740311 | lament | a poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or some other intense loss | 78 | |
| 13654740312 | lampoon | a satire | 79 | |
| 13654740313 | loose sentence | a sentence that is complete before its end; ex. Jack loved Barbara despite her irritating snorting laugh, her complaining, and her terrible taste in shoes | 80 | |
| 13654740314 | periodic sentence | a sentence that is not grammatically complete until it has reached its final phrase; ex. Despite Barbara's irritation at Jack's peculiar habit of picking between his toes while watching MTV and his terrible haircut, she loved him | 81 | |
| 13654740315 | lyric | a type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world | 82 | |
| 13654740316 | masculine rhyme | a rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable | 83 | |
| 13654740317 | melodrama | a form of cheesy theater that exploits stereotypes | 84 | |
| 13654740318 | metaphor | a comparison or analogy that states one thing is another | 85 | |
| 13654740319 | simile | a metaphor that softens the full-out equation of things by using like or as | 86 | |
| 13654740320 | metonym | a word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with | 87 | |
| 13654740321 | motif | a recurring symbol | 88 | |
| 13654740322 | nemesis | the protagonist's archenemy | 89 | |
| 13654740323 | objectivity | a treatment of subject matter that is impersonal or an outside view of events | 90 | |
| 13654740324 | subjectivity | a treatment of subject matter that uses the interior or personal view of a single observer and is typically colored with that observer's emotional responses | 91 | |
| 13654740325 | onomatopoeia | words that sound like what they mean | 92 | |
| 13654740326 | opposition | a pair of elements that contrast sharply | 93 | |
| 13654740327 | oxymoron | a phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction | 94 | |
| 13654740328 | parable | a story that instructs; similar to a fable or allegory | 95 | |
| 13654740329 | paradox | a situation or statement that seems to contradict itself but on closer inspection does not | 96 | |
| 13654740330 | parallelism | repeated syntactical similarities for used effect | 97 | |
| 13654740331 | paraphrase | to restate phrases and sentences in your own words | 98 | |
| 13654740332 | parenthetical phrase | a phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary | 99 | |
| 13654740333 | parody | a work that makes fun of another work by exaggerating its qualities to ridiculousness | 100 | |
| 13654740334 | pastoral | a poem set in tranquil nature | 101 | |
| 13654740335 | persona | the narrator in a non-first-person novel | 102 | |
| 13654740336 | personification | giving an inanimate object human qualities or form | 103 | |
| 13654740337 | plaint | a poem or speech expressing sorrow | 104 | |
| 13654740338 | point of view | perspective from which the action of a novel or poem is presented | 105 | |
| 13654788258 | omniscient narrator | a narrator who is able to know, see, and tell all, including the inner thoughts and feelings of the characters | 106 | |
| 13654790311 | limited omniscient narrator | the third person narrator relates the thoughts and feelings of only one character. | 107 | |
| 13654740339 | prelude | an introductory poem to a longer work or verse | 108 | |
| 13654740340 | protagonist | the main character of a novel or play | 109 | |
| 13654740341 | pun | play on words | 110 | |
| 13654740342 | refrain | a line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem | 111 | |
| 13654740343 | requiem | a song of prayer for the dead | 112 | |
| 13654740344 | rhapsody | an intensely passionate verse usually of love or praise | 113 | |
| 13654740345 | rhetorical question | a question that suggests an answer | 114 | |
| 13654740346 | satire | a form of writing that exposes common character flaws to the cold light of humor | 115 | |
| 13654740347 | soliloquy | a speech spoken by a character alone on stage | 116 | |
| 13654740348 | stanza | a group of lines in verse | 117 | |
| 13654740349 | stock characters | standard or cliched character types | 118 | |
| 13654740350 | suspension of disbelief | demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging and supply the details with imagination | 119 | |
| 13654740351 | symbolism | when an object represents an idea | 120 | |
| 13654802600 | syncope | contracting, or shortening, a word by removing internal sounds, syllables, or letters and inserting an apostrophe | 121 | |
| 13654740352 | synecdoche | figure of speech in which a part represents the whole | 122 | |
| 13654740353 | theme | the main idea of the overall work | 123 | |
| 13654740354 | thesis | the main position of an argument | 124 | |
| 13654740355 | tragic flaw | the weakness of character in an otherwise good individual | 125 | |
| 13654740356 | travesty | a grotesque parody | 126 | |
| 13654740357 | truism | a way-too-obvious truth | 127 | |
| 13654812239 | versimilitude | the quality of appearing to be true, real, likely, or probable. | 128 | |
| 13654740358 | zeugma | the use of a word to modify two or more words but used for different meanings | 129 |
