- satire: a kind of literature that ridicules human folly or vice with the purpose of bringing about reform
- scansion: the process of measuring verse, of marking accented and unaccented syllables
- sentimental poetry: poetry aimed primarily at stimulating the emotions rather than at communication experience honestly and freshly
- sestet: a six line stanza. the last six lines of a sonnet structured on the Italian model
- simile: a figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made between two things essentially unlike
- sonnet: a fixed form of fourteen lines, normally iambic pentameter, with a rime scheme conforming to or approximation one of two main types, Italian or English
- spondee: a metrical foot consisting of two syllables equally accented
- stanza: a group of lines whose metrical pattern is repeated throughout the poem
- structure: the internal organization of a poem's content
- symbol: a figure of speech in which something means more than what it is
- synecdoche: a figure of speech in which a part is used for thw whole
- tetrameter: a metrical line containing four feet
- theme: the central idea of a literary work
- tone: a writer's or speaker's attitude toward his subject, his audience, or himself
- total meaning: the total experience communicated by a poem
- trimeter: a meter in which a majority of the feet contain three syllables; anapestic and dactylic meter
- triple meter: a metrical line containing three feet
- triple rime: a rime in which the repeated accented vowel sound is in the third last syllable of the words involved
- trochaic meter: a meter in which the majority of feet are trochees
- trochee: a metrical foot consisting of one accented syllable followed by one unaccented syllable
- understatement: a figure of speech that consists of saying less than one means, or of saying what one means with less force than the occasion warrants
- verse: metrical language; the opposite of prose
poetry s-v