| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Allegory | A story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning |
| Alliteration | the repetition of initial sounds in neighboring words |
| Allusion | brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or ficticious, or to a work of art |
| Analogy | the comparison of two pairs which have the same relationship |
| Anastrophe | Inversion of the normal syntactic order of words |
| Antithesis | opposition or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction |
| Aphorism | brief saying embodying a moral, a concise statement of a principle or precept given in pointed words |
| Apostrophe | when an absent person, an abstract concept, or an important object is directly addressed |
| Archetype | An original model or pattern from which other later copies are made |
| Assonance | Repetition of vowel sounds (Not consonant sounds as in consonance) |
| Cacophony | harsh, discordant sounds. Opposite of euphony |
| Caesura | natural pause or break |
| Characterization | the method used by a writer to develop a character. The method includes (1) showing the character's appearance, (2) displaying the character's actions, (3) revealing the character's thoughts, (4) letting the character speak, and (5) getting the reactions of others |
| Chiasmus | A type of rhetoric in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first |
| Circumlocution | the use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter form of expression; a roundabout or indirect manner of writing or speaking |
| Conflict | struggle found in fiction |
| Connotation | An implied meaning of a word |
| Denotation | The literal meaning of a word, the dictionary meaning |
| Deus ex machina | an artificial, or improbable, character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot |
| Diction | The choice of a particular words as opposed to others |
| Doppelganger | ghostly double of another character, especially if it haunts its counterpart |
| Epithet | A short, poetic nickname attached to the normal name |
| Euphemism | The substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener |
| Euphony | Soothing pleasant sounds (opposite of cacophony) |
| Foil | A character that contrasts another character |
| Foreshadowing | the use of hints or clues to suggest what will happen later in literature |
| Hyperbole | Exaggeration or overstatement |
| Image | Language that evokes one or all of the five senses |
| Internal Rhyme | Rhyming within a line |
| Inversion | Another word for anastrophe |
| Irony | implied discrepancy between what is said and what is meant |
| Juxtaposition | when one theme or idea or person or whatever is paralleled to another |
| Malapropism | an act or habit of misusing words ridiculously, esp. by the confusion of words that are similar in sound (Usually has a comic effect) |
| Metaphor | Comparison of two unlike things using the verb "to be" and not using "like" or "as" as in a simile. |
| Metonymy | substituting a word for another word closely associated with it |
| Motif | A conspicuous recurring element |
| Mood | An emotional attitude the author takes towards his/her subject |
| Nemesis | A character in drama who brings about another's downfall |
| Onomatopoeia | A word that imitates the sound it represents |
| Oxymoron | Putting two contradictory words together |
| Paradox | Reveals a kind of truth which at first seems contradictory |
| Periphrasis | Adding in superfluos words to extend the message you are trying to give |
| Personification | giving human qualities to animals or objects |
| Puns | The usually humorous use of a word in which a way suggest 2+ of its meanings of another word similar in sound |
| Pathetic Fallacy | The attribution of human traits to nature or inanimate objects |
| Point of View | Perspective from which story is told (First Person, Third Person, Omniscient, Omniscience) |
| Plot | The sequence in which the author arranges events in a story |
| Prologue | a preface to the story, setting up the story, giving background information and other miscellaneous information |
| Rhyme Scheme | rhymed words at the ends of lines |
| Rhyme | pattern of words that contain similar sounds |
| Rhythm | A movement with uniform recurrence of a beat or accent |
| Satire | A literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness, often with the intent of correct, or changing, the subject of the satiric attack |
| Setting | Determining time and place in fiction |
| Simile | Comparison of two unlike things using "like" or "as" |
| Spoonerism | The shuffling of the first letters of words to make different words and therefore change the actual meaning of the sentence, or else produce a humerous, non-sensical sound |
| Stanza | Grouping of lines in a poem |
| Stream of Consciousness | A special mode of narration that undertakes to capture the full spectrum and the continuous flow of a character's mental process |
| Symbol | Using an objector action that means something more than its literal meaning |
| Synecdoche | When one uses a part to represent a whole |
| Synesthesia | Taking one type of sensory input (sight, touch, etc.) and co-mingling with another separate sense in an impossible way |
| Syntax | The way in which linguistic elements are put together to form phrases |
| Theme | the general idea or insight about life that a writer wishes to express |
| tone | Attitude a writer takes towards a subject or character |
| Understatement | This device is used to understate the obvious |
| Verisimilitude | Appearance of truth; quality of seeming ot be true |
| Verse | A line of poetry |
| Verbal Irony | when an author says one thing and means something else |
| Dramatic Irony | When an audience perceives something that a character in the literature doesn't know |
| Irony of Situation | Discrepancy between the expected result and the actual results |
Combine with other sets
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