Terms : Hide Images
| 7862590372 | ALLEGORY | story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities. | 0 | |
| 7862590717 | ALLITERATION | repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together. | 1 | |
| 7862591177 | 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 | |
| 7862592448 | ANALOGY | Comparison made between two things to show how they are alike | 3 | |
| 7862593223 | 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. | 4 | |
| 7862593702 | ANTITHESIS | Balancing words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted, often by means of grammatical structure. | 5 | |
| 7862594597 | ANTIHERO | Central character who lacks all the qualities traditionally associated with heroes. may lack courage, grace, intelligence, or moral scruples | 6 | |
| 7862595149 | ANTHROPOMORPHISM | attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object (Personification) | 7 | |
| 7862595613 | APHORISM | brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life, or of a principle or accepted general truth. Also called maxim, epigram | 8 | |
| 7862596012 | INVOCATION | 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 | 9 | |
| 7951802139 | APOSTROPHE | a mark used to indicate the omission of one or more letters. | 10 | |
| 7862596347 | ASSONANCE | the repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds especially in words that are together | 11 | |
| 7862597053 | CONCEIT | an elaborate metaphor that compares two things that are startlingly different. Often an extended metaphor | 12 | |
| 7862597516 | COUPLET | two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry. | 13 | |
| 7862598011 | DICTION | a speaker or writer's choice of words | 14 | |
| 7862598312 | DIDACTIC | form of fiction or nonfiction that teaches a specific lesson or moral or provides a model of correct behavior or thinking | 15 | |
| 7862598682 | EPIGRAPH | a quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of the theme. | 16 | |
| 7862600514 | METONYMY | a figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing, is referred to by something closely associated with it. | 17 | |
| 7862600920 | MOOD | An atmosphere created by a writer's diction and the details selected | 18 | |
| 7862601488 | MOTIF | a recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation used throughout a work (or in several works by one author), unifying the work by tying the current situation to previous ones, or new ideas to the theme | 19 | |
| 7862601779 | OXYMORON | a figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase. "Jumbo shrimp." "Pretty ugly." "Bitter-sweet" | 20 | |
| 7862602966 | PARABLE | a relatively short story that teaches a moral, or lesson about how to lead a good life. | 21 | |
| 7862603585 | PARADOX | a statement that appears self-contradictory, but that reveals a kind of truth. KOAN is a paradox used in Zen Buddhism to gain intuitive knowledge: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" | 22 | |
| 7862603872 | PARALLEL STRUCTURE (parallelism) | the repetition of words or phrases that have similar grammatical structures. | 23 | |
| 7862604098 | PARODY | a work that makes fun of another work by imitating some aspect of the writer's style. | 24 | |
| 7862604625 | POLYSYNDETON | sentence which uses a conjunction with NO commas to separate the items in a series. Instead of X, Y, and Z... Polysyndeton results in X and Y and Z... Kurt Vonnegut uses this device. | 25 | |
| 7862605130 | STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS | a style of writing that portrays the inner (often chaotic) workings of a character's mind. | 26 | |
| 7862605934 | STYLE | the distinctive way in which a writer uses language: a writer's distinctive use of diction, tone, and syntax. | 27 | |
| 7862606445 | SYMBOL | a person, place, thing, or event that has meaning in itself and that also stands for something more than itself. | 28 | |
| 7862606826 | SYNECDOCHE | a figure of speech in which a part represents the whole. "If you don't drive properly, you will lose your wheels." The wheels represent the entire car. | 29 | |
| 7862607526 | THEME | the insight about human life that is revealed in a literary work. | 30 | |
| 7862608235 | 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. | 31 | |
| 7862608587 | VERNACULAR | the language spoken by the people who live in a particular locality. | 32 | |
| 7862609318 | 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 (it is the opposite of anaphora). | 33 | |
| 7862609973 | EPITHET | an adjective or adjective phrase applied to a person or thing that is frequently used to emphasize a characteristic quality. "Father of our country" and "the great Emancipator" are examples. A Homeric epithet is a compound adjective used with a person or thing: "swift-footed Achilles"; "rosy-fingered dawn." | 34 | |
| 7862610404 | INVERSION | the reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase. | 35 | |
| 7862610405 | VERBAL IRONY | occurs when someone says one thing but really means something else. | 36 | |
| 7862610946 | 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. | 37 | |
| 7862610947 | 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. | 38 | |
| 7862611266 | 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. Ezra Pound: "The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough." | 39 | |
| 7862612556 | LITOTES | is a form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form: Hawthorne--- "...the wearers of petticoat and farthingale...stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng..." | 40 | |
| 7862614436 | MIXED METAPHOR | is a metaphor that has gotten out of control and mixes its terms so that they are visually or imaginatively incompatible. "The President is a lame duck who is running out of gas." | 41 | |
| 7862612948 | 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. | 42 | |
| 7862613415 | LOOSE SENTENCE | one in which the main clause comes first, followed by further dependent grammatical units. See periodic sentence. | 43 | |
| 7862613768 | IMPLIED METAPHOR | does not state explicitly the two terms of the comparison: "I like to see it lap the miles" is an implied metaphor in which the verb lap implies a comparison between "it" and some animal that "laps" up water. | 44 | |
| 7862613769 | DEAD METAPHOR | is a metaphor that has been used so often that the comparison is no longer vivid: "The head of the house", "the seat of the government", "a knotty problem" are all dead metaphors. | 45 | |
| 7862613416 | METAPHOR | a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without the use of such specific words of comparison as like, as, than, or resembles. | 46 |
