Terms : Hide Images
| 4129794538 | abstract | Typically complex, discusses intangible objects. Rarely uses examples to support points. | 0 | |
| 4129798058 | academic | Dry, theoretical. Heavy on analysis. | 1 | |
| 4129837498 | accent | The stressed (loudest) portion of a word or phrase. | 2 | |
| 4129840838 | aesthetic | Appealing to the senses. | 3 | |
| 4129844664 | aesthetics | The study of beauty. | 4 | |
| 4129845183 | allegory | A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning beyond the plot. | 5 | |
| 4129853003 | alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds. | 6 | |
| 4129855976 | allusion | A reference to another work or an event. | 7 | |
| 4129858196 | anachronism | Misplaced in time. ex: If the actor playing Brutus doesn't take off his digital watch. | 8 | |
| 4129861964 | analogy | A comparison that is used to clarify an action or relationship. | 9 | |
| 4129864440 | anecdote | A short narrative. | 10 | |
| 4129865436 | antecedent | The word, phrase, or clause that a pronoun refers to or replaces. ex: In the sentence: "The principal asked the children where they were going" the word "they" is the pronoun and "children" is the antecedent. | 11 | |
| 4129876338 | anthropomorphism | When inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are given human characteristics, behavior, or motivation. This is often confused with personification. | 12 | |
| 4129879860 | anticlimax | When an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect. This is often comedic. | 13 | |
| 4129882627 | antihero | A protagonist that is unheroic: morally weak, cowardly, dishonest, etc. | 14 | |
| 4129887420 | aphorism | A short and usually witty saying. Similar to an epigram. | 15 | |
| 4129890452 | *apostrophe* | An address to someone not present or to a personified object or idea. | 16 | |
| 4129891478 | archaism | The use of deliberately old-fashioned language. Often used to create a feeling of antiquity. | 17 | |
| 4129894479 | aside | A speech or comment made by an actor to the audience. Similar to a soliloquy. | 18 | |
| 4129896110 | aspect | A trait or characteristic. | 19 | |
| 4129897048 | assonance | The repeated use of vowel sounds. ex: Old king Cole was a merry old soul. | 20 | |
| 4129898777 | atmosphere | The emotional tone or background that surrounds a scene. | 21 | |
| 4129900222 | ballad | A long, narrative poem in regular meter/rhyme. Typically has a naive folksy quality (which distinguishes itself from an epic). | 22 | |
| 4129903548 | bathos | Insincere or overly sentimental quality of writing/speech intended to evoke pity. | 23 | |
| 4129907274 | pathos | When writing evokes feelings of pity and sympathy. | 24 | |
| 4129908486 | black humor | The use of disturbing themes in comedy. Dark humor. | 25 | |
| 4129909561 | bombast | Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language. When one tries to be eloquent by using too many words out of a thesaurus, one falls into this. | 26 | |
| 4129913508 | burlesque | The same thing as a parody. | 27 | |
| 4129917733 | cacophony | Deliberately harsh, awkward sounds in poetry. | 28 | |
| 4129923383 | cadence | The beat/rhythm of a poem. | 29 | |
| 4129923964 | canto | This divides long poetry in the same way that chapters divide a book. | 30 | |
| 4129926958 | *caricature* | A portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality. | 31 | |
| 4130312535 | catharsis | The "cleansing" of emotion an audience member experiences having lived vicariously through the experiences in the play. | 32 | |
| 4130316124 | chorus | In drama, this is the group of people who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it. | 33 | |
| 4130317415 | classic | This can mean "typical" as well as an "accepted masterpiece." | 34 | |
| 4130318974 | classical | This refers to the arts of ancient Greece and Rome. | 35 | |
| 4130320626 | coinage | A new word, invented on the spot. | 36 | |
| 4130322175 | colloquialism | A word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't a part of accepted "schoolbook" English. | 37 | |
| 4130324210 | complex/dense | Suggesting that there is more than one possibility in the meaning of words, ideas, images, etc. | 38 | |
| 4130327487 | *conceit* | In poetry, this refers to a startling or unusual metaphor, or one developed and expanded upon over several lines. | 39 | |
| 4130334418 | *controlling image* | When the image dominates and shapes the entire work. | 40 | |
| 4130336528 | connotation | This is everything that a word suggests or implies. | 41 | |
| 4130337750 | denotation | This is the literal definition of a word. | 42 | |
| 4130338332 | consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds within words (not at the beginning of words). ex: "A flock of sick, black-checkered ducks." | 43 | |
| 4130343577 | *couplet* | A pair of lines that end in rhyme. | 44 | |
| 4130344302 | decorum | In order to observe this, a character's speech must be styled according to his/her social station and in accordance with the occasion. | 45 | |
| 4130347017 | *diction* | The author's choice of words. | 46 | |
| 4130348114 | *syntax* | The author's choice of how words are ordered in a sentence. | 47 | |
| 4130349559 | dirge | A song for the dead. Typically slow, heavy, and melancholy. | 48 | |
| 4130350534 | dissonance | The grating of incompatible sounds. | 49 | |
| 4130350961 | doggerel | Crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme. Limericks are an example of this. | 50 | |
| 4130351858 | *dramatic irony* | When the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. | 51 | |
| 4130352853 | dramatic monologue | When a single speaker in literature says something to a silent audience. | 52 | |
| 4130353672 | elegy | This is a type of poem that meditates on death in a serious manner. | 53 | |
| 4130356280 | elements | Each type of literature has a different set of these. | 54 | |
| 4130357195 | *enjambment* | The continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause. | 55 | |
| 4130358291 | epic | This is a very long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style. | 56 | |
| 4130360261 | epitaph | Lines that commemorate the dead at their burial place. | 57 | |
| 4130361325 | euphemism | A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. ex: "passed away" instead of "died" "let go" instead of "fired" | 58 | |
| 4130368486 | euphony | This is when sounds blend harmoniously. | 59 | |
| 4130369750 | explicit | This is to say or write something directly and clearly. | 60 | |
| 4130371300 | farce | Today this refers to extremely broad humor. A long time ago, this referred to a comedic play. | 61 | |
| 4130374373 | feminine rhyme | Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. Not the same as a double rhyme. ex: If the 1st line ends with "running" and the 2nd ends with "gunning." | 62 | |
| 4130382471 | foil | A secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of the main character, usually by contrast. | 63 | |
| 4130386288 | foot | The basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry. This is formed by a combination of two or three syllables, stressed or unstressed. | 64 | |
| 4130388668 | *foreshadowing* | An event or statement in a narrative that suggests (barely) a larger event that comes later. | 65 | |
| 4130389813 | free verse | This is poetry written without a regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. | 66 | |
| 4130390499 | genre | A subcategory of literature. | 67 | |
| 4130391825 | gothic | This was a creepy mood that was awfully popular in the 18th Century. | 68 | |
| 4130398163 | hubris | This is excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character's downfall. | 69 | |
| 4130399946 | *hyperbole* | Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement. | 70 | |
| 4130400484 | implicit | To be this is to say or write something that merely suggests. | 71 | |
| 4130404454 | in medias res | This is Latin for "in the midst of things." ex: When "The Iliad" begins, the Trojan war has laready been going on for 7 years. | 72 | |
| 4130406726 | interior monologue | From novels and poetry, not dramatic literature. This refers to writing that records the mental talking that goes on inside of a character's head. | 73 | |
| 4130408495 | inversion | Switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase. | 74 | |
| 4130410887 | *irony* | One definition: a statement that means the opposite of what it seems to mean. Another definition: an undertow of meaning, sliding against the literal meaning of the words. | 75 | |
| 4130422319 | lament | A poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or over some other intense loss. | 76 | |
| 4130423625 | lampoon | A satire. | 77 | |
| 4130423970 | loose sentence | This type of sentence is complete before its end. ex: Jack loved Barbara despite her irritating snorting laugh, her complaining, and her terrible taste in shoes. | 78 | |
| 4130426184 | periodic sentence | This type of sentence 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. | 79 | |
| 4130429461 | lyric | A type of poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation and feelings about the subject of the poem. | 80 | |
| 4130431606 | masculine rhyme | This is a simple, regular rhyme. | 81 | |
| 4130433073 | meaning | This can be literal and concrete, or have foundations in emotions or feelings. | 82 | |
| 4130435289 | melodrama | This is a form of drama in which the good guy is really good, the bad guy is really bad, and the heroine is really pure. | 83 | |
| 4130438420 | *metaphor* | This is a comparison or analogy that states one thing is another. | 84 | |
| 4130444240 | *simile* | This is the same thing as a metaphor, it just doesn't equate two things. | 85 | |
| 4130445565 | metonym | A word that is used to stand for something else that it has attributes of or is associated with. ex: "a herd of *50 cows*" to "*50 head* of cattle" | 86 | |
| 4130449835 | motif | This is a recurring symbol. | 87 | |
| 4130450236 | nemesis | The protagonist's archenemy or supreme and persistent difficulty. | 88 | |
| 4130452291 | *objectivity* | This is when one analyzes something without any bias. | 89 | |
| 4130453247 | *subjectivity* | This is when one analyzes something by using their opinions. | 90 | |
| 4130455390 | *omniscient narrator* | This is a 3rd-person narrator who sees and understands all action that occurs. | 91 | |
| 4130460293 | onomatopoeia | Words that sound like what they mean. | 92 | |
| 4130461122 | *opposition* | When you compare two elements that contrast sharply, not necessarily conflict. | 93 | |
| 4130465026 | oxymoron | This is a phrase composed of opposites. A contradiction. ex: A calm frenzy. | 94 | |
| 4130466381 | parable | Like a fable or an allegory, this is a story that instructs. | 95 | |
| 4130466787 | *paradox* | A situation or statement that seems to contradict itself but upon closer inspection does not. | 96 | |
| 4130470567 | parallelism | This is repeated syntactical similarities used for effect. | 97 | |
| 4130470857 | paraphrase | This is to restate phrases and sentences in your own words. | 98 | |
| 4130472070 | parenthetical phrase | A phrase set off by commas that interrupts the flow of a sentence with some commentary or added detail. ex: Jack's three dogs, *including that miserable little spaniel*, were with him that day. | 99 | |
| 4130518569 | parody | A work that makes fun of another work by exaggerating many of its qualities to ridiculousness. | 100 | |
| 4130519309 | pastoral | A poem set in tranquil nature. Usually about shepherds. | 101 | |
| 4130519937 | persona | An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. | 102 | |
| 4130523133 | *personification* | Giving an inanimate object human qualities or form. ex: The darkness of the forest became the figure of a beautiful, pale-skinned woman in night-black clothes. | 103 | |
| 4130524433 | plaint | A poem or speech expressing sorrow. | 104 | |
| 4130525303 | *point of view* | The perspective from which the action of a novel or narrative poem is presented. | 105 | |
| 4130526808 | limited omniscient narrator | This is a third-person narrator that generally reports only only what one character sees and thinks. | 106 | |
| 4130528093 | objective narrator | This is a third-person narrator who only reports on what would be visible to a camera. This narrator knows no thoughts of any characters unless they are said aloud. | 107 | |
| 4130529756 | first-person narrator | This is a narrator who is a character in the story and tells the tale form his/her point of view. | 108 | |
| 4130530696 | stream of consciousness | This type of narration is similar to first-person, but all the author does is place the reader into the mind of a character. | 109 | |
| 4130532903 | prelude | This is an introductory poem to a longer work of verse. | 110 | |
| 4130533583 | *protagonist* | The main character of a novel or play. | 111 | |
| 4130533946 | pun | The usually humorous use of a word in such a way to suggest two or more meanings. | 112 | |
| 4130534348 | refrain | A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem. | 113 | |
| 4130534742 | requiem | A song of prayer for the dead. | 114 | |
| 4130535135 | rhapsody | An intensely passionate verse or section of verse, usually of love or praise. | 115 | |
| 4130535888 | rhetorical question | A question that suggests an answer. | 116 | |
| 4130536306 | *satire* | This genre of writing exposes common character flaws to the cold light of humor. | 117 | |
| 4130541558 | soliloquy | A speech spoken by a character alone on stage. | 118 | |
| 4130543156 | *stanza* | A group of lines in verse, roughly analogous in function to the paragraph in prose. | 119 | |
| 4130543875 | stock characters | Standard or cliched character types, such as the drunk, the miser, and the foolish girl. | 120 | |
| 4130545174 | subjunctive mood | A hypothetical situation, usually wishful thinking. ex: "If I were you..." | 121 | |
| 4130548319 | suggest | To imply, infer, and/or indicate. | 122 | |
| 4130549635 | summary | A simple retelling of what you read. | 123 | |
| 4130550001 | suspension of disbelief | This is the acceptance on an audience's/reader's part of the incidents of a plot. | 124 | |
| 4130551842 | *symbolism* | A device in literature where an object represents an idea. | 125 | |
| 4130552293 | synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part represents the whole. | 126 | |
| 4130552800 | technique | The methods, tools, and actions of the author. | 127 | |
| 4130553561 | *theme* | The main idea of the overall work. It is the topic of discourse or discussion. | 128 | |
| 4130554594 | thesis | The main position of an argument. | 129 | |
| 4130555623 | tragic flaw | In a tragedy, this is the weakness of character in an otherwise good individual that ultimately leads to his/her demise. | 130 | |
| 4130556969 | travesty | A grotesque parody. | 131 | |
| 4130557348 | truism | An obvious truth. ex: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. | 132 | |
| 4130561674 | utopia | An idealized place. | 133 | |
| 4130562273 | zeugma | A figure of speech in which a word applies to two or more words in different senses. ex: John and his license *expired* last week. | 134 |
