| abstract | complex style of writing |
| absurd hero | determined to continue living without passion even though life seems meaningless |
| academic | dry and theoretical writing |
| accent | refers to the stressed portion of the word |
| ad hoc argument | giving an "after-the-fact" explanation |
| aesthetic | appealing to the senses |
| allegory | story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning outside of the story itself |
| alliteration | the repetition of initial consonant sounds |
| allusion | reference to another work or famous figure |
| anachronism | derived from Greek meaning "misplaced in time" |
| analogy | a comparison |
| anaphora | the deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs |
| anecdote | a short, narrative story |
| antecedent | word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to |
| anthropomorphism | when inanimate objects are given human characteristics |
| anticlimax | occurs when an action produces far smaller results than one had been led to expect |
| apostrophe | speaker talks directly to something that is non-human or absent |
| archaism | use of deliberately old-fashioned language |
| aside | speech made by the actor to the audience (usually short) |
| ballad | long, narrative poem usually in very regular meter and rhyme |
| bathos, pathos | writing of a scene evokes feelings of dignified pity |
| black humor | use of disturbing themes in comedy |
| bombast | pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language |
| burlesque | a broad parody |
| cacophony | use of deliberately harsh, awkward sounds |
| cadence | the beat or rhythm of poetry in a general sense |
| canto | name for a section division in a long work of poetry |
| caricature | a portrait (verbal or otherwise) that exaggerates a facet of personality |
| catharsis | term drawn from Aristotle's writing on tragedy |
| chiasmus | figure of speech by which the order of terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second |
| circular reasoning | practice of assuming something, in order to prove the very thing that you assumed |
| coinage | a new word, usually one invented on the spot |
| colloquialism | a word or phrase used in everyday conversational English that isn't part of accepted "school-book" English |
| complex/dense | two terms that carry a similar meaning of suggesting that there is more than one possibility in the meaning of words |
| conceit | a controlling image |
| decorum | when a character's speech is styled to their social station |
| dirge | a song for the dead |
| dissonance | refers to the grating of incompatible sounds |
| doggerel | crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme |
| double entendre | an expression or term liable to more than one interpretations |
| elegy | type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner |
| ellipsis | omission of word or words understood in the context |
| enjambment | continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next one |
| equivocation | when the same word is used with two different meanings |
| euphemism | word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality |
| euphony | when sounds blend harmoniously |
| explicit | to say or write something directly and clearly |
| hero's journey | most typical protagonists go through this throughout their story |
| hyperbole | exaggeration or deliberate overstatement |
| implicit | never directly says what is implied |
| in median res | Latin for "in the midst of things" |
| inversion | switching the customary order of elements of a sentence or phrase |
| juxtaposition | act of placing two things close together or side by side |
| lampoon | a satire |
| limerick | a humorous five line poem |
| litotes | an understatement, where the speaker or writer uses the negative of a word ironically, to mean the opposite |
| masculine rhyme | a rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable |
| onomatopoeia | words that sound like what they mean |
| pastoral | a poem set in tranquil nature or more specifically, one about sheperds |
| plaint | a poem or speech expressing sorrow |