| Term | Definition |
|---|
| alliteration | a repetition of consonants, especially at the beginning of words |
| alliteration | Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. |
| assonance | A moony tune made me swoon, and soon I turned into a loon. |
| chiasmus | A reversal in the order of words so that the second half of a statement balances the first half in inverted word order. |
| chiasmus | Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike. |
| hyperbole | obvious and deliberate exaggerations; an extravagant statement not to be taken literally |
| hyperbole | And I will luve thee still, my dear, till a' the seas gang dry. |
| imagery | language that evokes one or any of the five senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching |
| imagery | The whistle of a boat calls and cries unendingly, like some lost child... |
| internal rhyme | Rhyming of a word within a line of verse with a word at the end of the line. |
| internal rhyme | I fear my dear, for the life of my wife. |
| metaphor | an implied analogy that identifies one thing with another. |
| metaphor | He is a mountain of a man. |
| metaphor | Her eyes are stars. |
| metonymy | The name of one object or idea used for another to which it is related or of which it is a part. |
| metonymy | the crown = king |
| metonymy | the fleet = sailors |
| onomatopoeia | Words form in such a way that the sounds of the words in which themselves imitate the sounds of the things they describe |
| onomatopoeia | pop, zap, tinkle, zoom |
| oxymoron | Two contradictory words or phrases are combined to produce a rhetorical effect by means of a paradox |
| oxymoron | almost exactly |
| oxymoron | jumbo shrimp |
| paradox | a statement apparently self-contradictory or absurd but really containing a possible truth |
| paradox | Cowards die many times before their deaths. |
| paradox | the child is father to the man |
| personification | ideas, animals, abstractions, and inanimate objects are given human form, traits, and/or feelings |
| personification | Spring arose from her bed of sleep. |
| personification | Justic wept at man's inhumanity toward others |
| simile | two things are compared by using like, as, or as if. |
| simile | He is as big as a mountain. |
| simile | Her eyes are like stars. |
| allusion | A reference to some famous person, place, or thing in history, in other fiction, or in actuality |
| scansion | analysis of verse into metrical patterns |
| allusion | He endured more trials than Job. |
| meter | A poetic measure that refers to the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of a poem |
| foot | A complete metrical unit. |
| rhyme scheme | a pattern of rhyme in the final words of poetic lines. |
| rhyme | correspondence in terminal sounds of two or more words, lines of verse, or other units of composition. |
| rhyme | moon, loon, June, toon |
| iamb | U/ |
| trochee | /U |
| iamb | surprise (scansion) |
| trochee | splashing (scansion) |
| anapest | UU/ |
| anapest | intervene (scansion) |
| iamb | rising rhythm |
| trochee | falling rhythm |
| anapest | rising rhyhm, more rapid than the iambic foot |
| dactyl | /UU |
| dactyl | delicate (scansion) |
| dactyl | falling rhythm, most lively of English meters |
| spondee | // |
| spondee | amen (scansion) |
| trimeter | a verse of three feet |
| tetrameter | a verse of four feet |
| pentameter | a verse of five feet |
| sextameter | a verse of six feet |
| septameter | a verse of seven feet |
| assonance | the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in a poetic line |
Combine with other sets
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