| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Allegory | Characters are symbols, has a moral |
| Alliteration | repetition at close intervals of initial consonant words |
| Allusion | a reference to something in literature of history |
| Anaphora | repetition of the same word or words at the start of two or more lines |
| Apostrophe | someone absent, dead, or imaginary, or an abstraction, is being addressed as if it could reply. |
| Archetype | a character or personality type found in every society |
| Assonance | repetition at close intervals of vowel sounds |
| Blank Verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| Cacophony | harsh, non-melodic, unpleasant sounding arrangement of words |
| Caesura | a natural pause in the middle of a line, sometimes coinciding with punctuation |
| Conceit | an extended witty, paradoxical, or startling metaphor |
| Connotation | what a word suggests beyond its surface definition |
| Consonance | repetition at close intervals of final consonant sounds |
| Couplet | two successive lines which rhyme, usually at the end of a work. |
| Denotation | basic definition or dictionary meaning of a word |
| Diction | choice of words for effect |
| Didactic Poetry | poetry with the primary purpose of teaching or preaching |
| Dramatic Monologue | character "speaks" through the poem; a character study |
| Elegy | poem which expresses sorrow over a death of someone for whom the poet cared, or on another solemn theme |
| Enjambment | describes a line of petry in which the sense and grammatical construction continues on to the next line |
| Euphony | pleasant, easy to articulate words |
| Feminine Rhyme | latter two syllables of first word rhyme with latter two syllables of second word (ceiling appealing) |
| Free Verse | no fixed meter or rhyme |
| Hyperbole | exaggeration, overstatement |
| Iambic Pentameter | 70% of verse is written this way; ten syllables per line, following an order of unaccedted-accented syllables |
| Imagery | representation through language of a sensory experience |
| Internal Rhyme | repetition of sounds within a line (but not at the end of the line) |
| Irony | incongruity or discrepancy between the implied and expected; verbal, physically, situational |
| Masculine Rhyme | final syllable of first word rhymes with final syllable of second word (scald recalled) |
| Metaphor | implied or direct comparison |
| Meter | regularized rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables; accents occur at approx. equal intervals of time |
| Metonymy | symbolism; one thing is used as a substitute for another with which it is closely identified (the White House) |
| Mood | the atmosphere suggested by the structure and style of the poem |
| Onomatopoeia | use of words which mimic their meaning in sound |
| Oxymoron | compact paradox; two successive words contradict each other |
| Pace | tempo or rate implied by the structure and style of the poem |
| Paradox | statement or situation containing seemingly contradictory elements |
| Parallelism | presents coordinating ideas in a coordinating manner |
| Persona | assumed speaker of the poem; typically used synonymously with 'speaker' |
| Personification | giving a non-human the characteristics of a human |
| Refrain | repeated word, phrase, line, or a group of lines in a pattern |
| Rhyme | repetition of end sounds |
| Rhythm | wave-like recurrence of sound |
| Sibilance | hissing sounds represented by s, z, sh |
| Simile | comparison using 'like' or 'as' |
| Sonnet | 14 line poem, fixed rhyme scheme, fixed meter (usually 10 syllables per line) |
| Stanza | group of lines |
| Structure | internal organization of a poem's content |
| Style | an author's combined use of these ideas into a recurring pattern of usage |
| Symbolism | something (object, person, situation, etc.) means more than what it is |
| Synecdoche | symbolism; the part signifies the whole, or the whole the part (all hands on board) |
| Syntax | word order or grammatical appropriateness |
| Theme | central idea |
| Tone | writer's attitude toward the audience or subject, implied or related directly. |
| Understatement | saying less than one means, for effect |
Combine with other sets
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