| Term | Definition |
|---|
| alliteration | repetition of beginning sound in poetry |
| onomatopoeia | using words that imitate the sound they denote |
| metaphor | a comparison without using like or as |
| simile | comparison using "like" or "as" |
| cliche | metaphors and similes that have been overused so they are no longer fresh |
| personification | the act of attributing human characteristics to abstract ideas etc. |
| rhyme | words with the same ending sounds (spelling is moot) |
| perfect rhyme | Rhymes involving sound that are exactly the same (ex: love, dove) |
| imperfect rhyme | (approximate or slant rhyme) involves words that sound similar, but are not exactly the same |
| end rhyme | Rhyme that occurs at the end of two or more lines of poetry |
| internal rhyme | rhyme between words that occurs within a single line of poetry |
| rhyme scheme | the pattern of end rhymes in a poem |
| meter | rhythm or beat of a line of poetry |
| hyperbole | extravagant exaggeration |
| irony | The use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning |
| narrative poem | a poem that tells a story |
| ballad | a type of poem that is meant to be sung and is both lyric and narrative in nature |
| blank verse | unrhymed verse (usually in iambic pentameter) |
| cinquain | a five line stanza |
| free verse | Poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme |
| haiku | A form of Japanese poetry with 17 syllables in three unrhymed lines. |
| limerick | A five line poem in which lines 1, 2 and 5 rhyme and lines 3 and 4 rhyme. |
| sonnet | a verse form consisting of 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme |
| dramatic | poetry intended to be performed rather than read |
| anthology | a collection of selected literary passages |
| prose | margin-to-margin writing that uses conventional (standard) English convention to communicate ideas |
| poetry | writing that plays with space and language to creatively communicate ideas |
| stanza | a "paragraph" in poetry |
| couplet | 2-line stanza |
| triplet | 3-line stanza |
| quatrain | 4-line stanza |
| sestet | 6-line stanza |
| septet | 7-line stanza |
| octave | 8-line stanza |
| assonance | the repetition of similar vowels in the stressed syllables of successive words |
| repetition | repeated use of sounds, words, or ideas for effect and emphasis |
| epic | a long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds |
| symbol | something visible that by association or convention represents something else that is invisible |
| consonance | the repetition of consonants (or consonant patterns) especially at the ends of words |
| iambic pentameter | a common meter in poetry consisting of an unrhymed line with five feet or accents, each foot containing an unaccented syllable and an accented syllable |
| oxymoron | conjoining contradictory terms (as in 'deafening silence') |
Combine with other sets
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