| Term | Definition |
|---|
| alliteration | repetition at close intervals of initial consonant words |
| assonance | repetition at close intervals of vowel sounds |
| consonance | repetition at close intervals of final consonant sounds |
| cacophony | harsh, non-melodic, unpleasant sounding arrangement of words |
| euphony | pleasant, easy to articulate words |
| onomatopoeia | use of words which mimic their meaning in sound |
| sibilance | hissing sounds represented by s, z, sh |
| allegory | characters are symbols, has a moral |
| apostrophe | someone absent, dead, or imagianary, or an abstraction, is being addressed as if it could reply |
| didactic | Literature with the primary purpose of teaching or preaching |
| elegy | poem which expresses sorow over a death of someone for whom the poet cared, or on another solemn theme |
| sonnet | 14 line poem, fixed rhyme scheme, fixed meter (usually 10 syllables per line) |
| connotation | what a word suggests beyond its surface definition |
| denotation | basic definition or dictionary meaning of a word |
| diction | choice of words for effect |
| syntax | word order or grammatical appropriateness |
| 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 |
| archetype | a character or personality type found in every society |
| conceit | an extended witty, paradoxical, or startling metaphor |
| hyperbole | exaggeration, overstatement |
| imagery | representation through language of a sensory experience |
| irony | incongruity or discrepancy between the implied and expected; verbal, dramatic, situational |
| metaphor | implied or direct comparison |
| 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 |
| oxymoron | compact paradoxl two successive words contradict each other |
| 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 |
| simile | comparison using 'like' or 'as' |
| 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) |
| theme | central idea |
| tone | writer's attitude toward the audience or subject, implied or related directly |
| meiosis | saying less than one means, for effect; understatement |
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