- dramatic irony: a device by which the author implies a different meaning from that intended by the speaker
- heard rhythm: the actual rhythm of a metrical poem as we hear it when it is read naturally
- heptameter: a metrical line containing seven feet
- hexameter: a metrical line containing six feet
- hyperbole: a figure of speech in which exaggeration is used in the service of truth
- iamb: a metrical foot consisting of one unaccented syllable followed by one accented syllable
- iambic meter: a meter in which the majority of feet are iambs
- imagery: the representation through language of sense experience
- internal rhyme: a rhyme in which one or both of the rhyme words occur within the line
- irony: a situation involving some kind of incongruity or discrepancy
- italian sonnet: a sonnet consisting of an octave riming abbbaabbba
- limerick: a fixed form consisting of five lines of anapestic meter, riming aabba
- masculine rime: a rime in which the pepeated accented vowel sound is in the final syllable of the words involved
- metaphor: a figure of speech in which an implicit comparison is made between two things essentially unlike
- meter: regularized rhythm; an arrangement of language in whcih the accents occur at apparently equal intervals in time
- metonymy: a figure of speech in which some significant aspect is used to represent the whole experience (The White House has decided...)
- monometer: a metrical line containing one foot
- monosyllable foot: a foot consisting of a single accented syllable
- situational irony: a situation in which there is an incongruity between actual circumstances and those that would seem apporpriate
- verbal irony: a figure of speech in which what is meant is the opposite of what is said