| A | B |
|---|
| Blank Verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter. |
| Caesura | A strong pause or a break within a line of verse, often creating a counter rhythm. From the Latin for “a cutting off.” |
| Chalice | A bowl-shaped drinking vessel; especially the Eucharistic cup. |
| Static character | One who does not change in the course of the story. |
| Clause | A group of words containing a subject and a predicate (verb) and forming part of a sentence. |
| Climax (exact) | The highest point of interest or intensity in a literary work, reached after a series of preparatory steps. The climax is often the point in the story where the fortunes of the protagonist takes an important turn. |
| Consonance | Repetition of similar sounds in the final syllables of words, as in torn/burn, add/read, heaven/given. (See assonance). |
| Connotation | What you must know in order to determine the reference of an expression |
| Denotation | The class of objects that an expression refers to. The literal definition of a word; its stripped down meaning devoid of emotional overtones or connotations. |
| Dénouement | French for untying, but means the wrapping up of the major plot elements at the end of a play. The term implies an ingenious satisfying outcome – for instance, the solution to a central dilemma. |
| Derisive | Abusing vocally; expressing contempt or ridicule. |
| Dialectic | The playing off of opposing forces or points of view. |
| Elegy | – A poem of mourning and lamentation. Elegies are most often sustained, formal poems with a meditative, solemn mood. Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard are Bloomed” was an elegy on the death of President Lincoln. |
| Eulogy | A formal expression of praise. |
| Epic | A long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds. |
| Figurative Language | Language using imaginative comparison rather than literal statement. |
| Free Verse | Poetry freed from the restraints of strong, regular meter and rhyme, developing instead its own individual pattern and free flowing rhythm. |
| Gerund | A verbal noun ending in –ing, that is, a noun formed from a verb. A gerund has the same form as the present or perfect participle: “Your speaking is appreciated”; “Your having spoken to us is greatly appreciated.” |
| Haiku | A widely practiced traditional Japanese poetic form of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables each. The haiku captures a moment in time, allowing a thought or image to linger in the memory. |
| Iambic pentameter | Five sets of syllables where the second syllable receives the stress as in the line, “I think that I detest the thought of work.” |
| Idiom | The characteristic, natural language of a group, or a phrase or way of expressing an idea that is an example of natural speech. |
| Illimitable | Without limits in extent or size or quantity. |
| Infer | - Reason by deduction; establish by deduction. Draw from specific cases for more general cases. Conclude by reasoning; in logic. Guess correctly; solve by guessing. Believe to be the case. |
| Beguiled | Influence by slyness or to cause to be enamored |
| Insidious | Beguiling but harmful. Intended to entrap. Working or spreading in a hidden and usually injurious way. |
| Juxtaposition | Positioning close together (or side by side). |
| Melodrama | Fiction or drama pitting good against evil and employing sensational plot twists and tear-jerking devices. |
| Meter | The accent in a metrical foot of verse. It is the underlying beat that in much traditional poetry regularizes the natural rhythms of speech. |
| Metonymy | A figure of speech that makes a term closely related to something serves as its substitute. For instance, the word sword b extension means “military career” in the line “He abandoned the sword.” |
| Misfeasance | Doing a proper act in a wrongful or injurious manner. |
| Onomatopoeia | Using words that imitate the sound they denote. |
| Paradox | a self-contradiction. An apparent contradiction that, on second thought, illuminates a truth. |
| Phrase | A group of words without subject and predicate used as a part of speech. |
| First person | “He says that when he was ten…I have many questions about this…” |
| Third person | (limited omniscient): “The schoolmaster was watching the two men…He crossed the empty, frigid classroom.” |
| Omniscient narrative | (all knowing narrative): “The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country…The prince was happy…” |
| Objective narrative | “The morning of June …. Soon the men began to gather stones…..the children assembled first….the lottery was conducted.” |
| Prose | Ordinary language or literary expression not marked by rhythm or rhyme. This type of language is used in short stories, essays, and modern plays. |
| Shakespearean Sonnet | The typical Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains followed by a concluding couplet. |
| Slant (or para) rhyme | The near rhyming of words that distantly sound alike. |
| Spondee | A rare metrical foot of two stressed syllables, as in one possible pronunciation of Hong Kong. |
| Synecdoche | A figure of speech that uses the part to stand for the whole, or the whole to stand for the part: wheels to mean ‘car’ and hired hands to mean ‘hired people.’ |
| Thesis | In expository prose, a concise, memorable summing up of what a writer is trying to say or setting out to prove. A thesis statement often appears toward the beginning of a paper or article as a preview of program, setting directions and steering the attention of the reader. However, in a more inductive kind of writing the writer may build toward the thesis and present it as a justified conclusion at the end. |
| Trochee | A two-syllable metrical foot with the stress on the first syllable (Boston). The following example of trochaic meter is from Coleridge: “Trochee trips from long to short |
