| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Apostrophe | Direct address |
| Ambiguity | Multiple meanings a literary work may communicate |
| Connotation | Implied meaning |
| Convention | Something used so often it becomes a recognized means of expression |
| Denotation | Dictionary definition |
| Digression | Use of material unrelated to the work |
| Grotesque | Characterized by distortions or incongruities |
| Hyperbole | Deliberate exaggeration |
| Oxymoron | Combination of opposite, often contradictory, terms |
| Paradox | A statement that seems contradicting but is, in fact, true |
| Soliloquy | A speech in which a character who is alone speaks his or her thoughts aloud |
| Syllogism | A form of reasoning in which two statements are made and a conclusion is drawn from them |
| Assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds |
| Ballad Meter | A four-line stanza rhymed abcb with four feet in lines one and three and three feet in lines two and four |
| Blank Verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| Dactyl | foot of poetry, stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables |
| End-stopped | A line with a pause at the end because of a period, comma, semicolon, etc. |
| Free Verse | Poetry not written in regular meter. |
| Heroic Couplet | Two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter |
| Iamb | Poetic foot consisting of short then a long syllable |
| Internal rhyme | Rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end |
| Pentameter | A line containing five feet |
| Rhyme Royal | A seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter |
| Sonnet | A fourteen-line poem of iambic pentameter |
| Stanza | A repeating grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme |
| Terza Rima | A three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc |
| Tetrameter | A line of four feet |
| Antecedent | The noun that comes before the pronoun that it is referring to. |
| Clause | A group of words containing a subject and its verb that may or may not be a complete sentence |
| Ellipsis | The omission of a word |
| Imperative | The mood of a verb that gives an order |
| Modify | To restrict or limit in meaning |
| Periodic Sentence | A sentence that is only gramatically complete at the end |
| Loose Sentence | Gramatically complete before the end of the sentence |
Combine with other sets
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