| Term | Definition |
|---|
| arduous | difficult; requiring much effort |
| dolorous | exhibiting sorrow or pain |
| epistle | a letter or literary composition in letter form |
| harangue | a long, strongly-expressed speech or lecture |
| humility | absence of vanity; humbleness |
| audacity | rude boldness; nerve |
| galvanize | to startle into sudden activity |
| incisive | sharp; keen; cutting straight to the heart of the matter |
| lexicon | a dictionary; a specialized vocabulary used in a particular field or place |
| pertinent | having to do with the subject at hand; relevant |
| adulation | excessive praise or admiration |
| bawdy | indecent; humorously obscene |
| clandestine | secret |
| deprecate | to express disapproval of |
| pernicious | destructive; deadly |
| cosm | world/universe |
| cred | believe |
| -ic/id | of/like |
| dorm | sleep |
| fin | end |
| -ory | a place for |
| nom | name |
| -ee | one who is |
| in- | not |
| clat | calling/system of calling |
| fac/fact/fect/fic | make/do |
| grat | please |
| -tude | the state of |
| mot/mov | to move |
| con | with |
| re- | away |
| de- | down |
| amicable | friendly; peaceable |
| mundane | common place; of the earth not spiritual |
| obstreperous | aggressively boisterous; stubborn and defaint |
| juggernaut | a terrible destructive or irreistible force |
| enraptured | delighted beyond measure |
| noxious | harmful to the health |
| chutzpah | nerve; audacity |
| crass | coarse; tasteless |
| befuddle | to confuse; to perplex |
| parsimonious | excessively thrifty; stingy |
| pique | to cause another's pride to be wounded |
| plebeian | a commoner; one from the lower class |
| prowess | superior in skill or ability |
| quell | to put an end to; to allay or quiet |
| quixotic | very idealistic; impractical; caught up in romantic notions |
| vindictive | seeking revenge; bearing a grudge |
| zephyr | a gentle breeze |
| hurtle | to move or to fling swiftly and with great force |
| scourge | a person or thing which causes great trouble ro misfortune |
| agnostic | one who believes that the existence of God can niether be proved or disproved |
| exodus | a departure, especially of a large group |
| impregnable | not able to be conquered; impenetrable |
| xenophobia | an intense dislike or fear of strangers or foreigners |
| pristine | pure; completely clean and uncontaminated |
| prodigal | reckless, wasteful, and extravagant |
| discordant | being in disagreement |
| mellifluous | having a rich, smoothly flowing flowing sound |
| verdant | fresh and green, referring to plant life |
| approbation | formal approving of an act |
| burgeon | to grow, expand, or bloom |
| oeuvre | the complete work of and artist, composer, or writer |
| alliteration | repetition of initial consonant sounds in neighboring words |
| allusion | a reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art, always indirect |
| analogy | a similarity in some respect between things that are otherwise dissimilar |
| antithesis | an opposing or contrast of ideas |
| aside | a dramatic convention by which an actor directly addresses the audience, but is not supposed to be heard by the other actors on stage |
| assonance | the reptition of vowel sounds with the repetition of consonants |
| atmosphere | the feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage done through the writer's choice of words,events in the work, or physical setting |
| ballad | a song that tells a story often dealing with adventure or romance |
| cliche' | an overused expression whose freshness and clarity have worn off |
| comedy | a light form of drama that aims primarily to amuse and ends happily |
| connotation | the emotional meaning of a word |
| denotation | the literal meaning of a word |
| conflict | opposint elements or characters in a plot |
| man vs man | the stuggle against a person or a group of people |
| man vs self | an internal struggle |
| man vs society | when a character has a problem with come element of society |
| man vs nature | a struggle against the elements of nature; like a hurricane |
| man vs machine | a struggle with a product of society |
| drama | a story performed by actors who impersonate other characters |
| epic | a long poem that tells of adventures of the main hero |
| farce | a comedy in which real life situations are greatly exaggerated for humorous effect |
| figures of speech | writing or speech not meant to be interpreted literally |
| flashback | jumping backward in the chronology of a narrative |
| foil | a character that is opposite of another's |
| hyperbole | an exaggeration or overstatement |
| imagery | adressess the five senses in order to create an image in the reader's mind |
| irony | the opposite of what is thought to happen |
| dramatic irony | a situation in a story where the reader knows what is happening, but the character does not |
| situational irony | the situation is the opposite of what a person would think |
| verbal irony | the person uses the opposite meaning of a word |
| jargon | specialized language use by a specific group of people |
| metaphor | comparison of unlike things without using like or as |
| monologue | when a single person speaks alone, and is heard by others |
| moral | the learning of a lesson contained in a story |
| onomatopoeia | the use of words that imitate sounds |
| oxymoron | figure of speech that combines two opposing or contradictory ideas |
| paradox | a sentance that shouldn't make sense, but does in the context it's used |
| parallelism | the repeating of phrases or sentaces that are simular in structure |
| parody | a humorous imitation of a literary work, one that exaggerates or distorts the features of the original |
| personification | the wirter attributes human qualities to objects or ideas |
| pun | phrases with multiple meanings |
| rhetorical question | a question to which no answer is expected |
| satire | writing that ridicules or criticizes individuals, ideas, institutions, social conventions, or other works or art or literature |
| simile | a comparison of two unlike things using like or as |
| solilquy | a character is speaking their thoughts while they are alone |
| symbol | a visible object that represnts an idea |
| theme | the statemen about life a particular work is trying to get across to a reader |
| tone | the writer's attitude toward their subject, characters, or audience |
| tragedy | a disasterous events which usually deals with loss or injuries |
Combine with other sets
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