| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds in neighboring words. Example: In clichés: sweet smell of success, a dime a dozen, bigger and better, jump for joy |
| Apostrophe | when a character speaks to an inanimate object |
| Assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds in sequence of nearby words. "The monster spoke in a low mellow tone" has assonance in its repetition of the "o" sound. |
| Atomoshere | (same as mood) often be described in a single word, such as lighthearted, frightening, or despairing. |
| Blank Verse | poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentammeter lines. |
| Consonance | A repetition of consonants, especially those after a stressed vowel ( march, lurch). |
| Dramatic Poetry | Poetry in which one or more characters speak |
| Figurative Language | a way of saying something other than the literal meaning of the words. For example, "All the world's a stage" |
| Figure of Speech | A term applied to a specific kind of figurative language, such as a metaphor or simile. |
| Hyperbole | Exaggeration or overstatement. |
| Iambic Pentameter | The most common verse line in English poetry. It consists of five verse feet, with each foot an iamb-that is, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Shakespeare's plays are written almost exclusively in iambic pentameter. |
| Image | a word or phrase in a literary text that appeals directly to the reader's taste, touch, hearing, sight, or smell. An image is thus any vivid or picturesque phrase that evokes a particular sensation in the reader's mind. |
| Imagery | Any poetic reference to the five senses (sight, touch, smell, hearing, touch, and taste). Imagery is a group of words used to create a mental picture. |
| Irony | when the opposite of what is expected to happen occurs |
| Lyric Poetry | Poetry that expresses a speaker's personal thoughts or feelings. The elegy, ode, and sonnet are forms of the lyric. |
| Metaphor | A comparison of two unlike things using the verb "to be" and not using like or as in a simile. |
| Meter | A generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry. |
| Mood | The feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage. The mood is suggested by descriptive words and can often be described in a single word, such as lighthearted, frightening, or despairing. |
| Metonymy | substituting a word for another word closely associated with it. Such as "crown" for "royalty" |
| Narrative Poetry | Poetry that tells a story. One kind of narrative poem is the epic, a long poem which sets form the heroic ideals of a particular society. |
| Onomatopoeia | a word that imitates the sound it represents |
| Paradox | reveals a kind of truth which at first seems contradictory. Two opposing ideas. |
| Personification | Giving human characteristics to animals or objects. |
| Quatrain | Usually a stanza or poem of four lines. However, a quatrain may also be any group of four lines. Unified by a rhyme scheme |
| Rhyme | a pattern of words that contain similar sounds. |
| Rhyme Scheme | rhymed words at the ends of lines. |
| Rhythm | The arrangement of stressed an unstressed syllables into a pattern. |
| Simile | the comparison of two unlike things using like or as. Ex: He eats like a pig. Vines like golden prisons. |
| Speaker | The voice in a poem. The speaker may be the poet or a character created by the poet. The speaker may also be a thing or an animal. |
| Symbol | using an object or action that means something more than its literal meaning. |
| Synecdoche | when one uses a part to represent the whole ex: All hands on deck |
| Theme | A central message or insight in to life revealed through a literary work |
| Tone | the attitude a writer takes towards a subject or character: serious, humorous, sarcastic, ironic, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, solemn, objective. |
| Understatement | used to belittle the obvious. (Opposite of Hyperbole) |
| Oxymoron | putting two contradictory words together. |
| Satire | a literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness |
| Stanza | a unified group of lines in poetry. |
Combine with other sets
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