| A | B |
|---|
| allegory | a story where people, things, and actions represent an idea or generalization about life; strong moral lesson usually. |
| alliteration | the repetition of initial consonant sounds in words. |
| allusion | a reference in literature to a familiar person, place, thing, or event. |
| archetype | an image, a descriptive detail, a plot pattern, or a character type that occurs frequently in literature, myth, religion, or folklore, and is believed to evoke profound emotions. |
| argumentation | a speech or writing intended to convince by establishing truth. |
| aside | a dramatic device where a character speaks his/her thoughts aloud; meant to be heard by the audience only. |
| assonance | the repetition of vowel sounds without the repetition of consonants. Ex: lake and fake. |
| ballad | a poem in a verse form that tells a story. |
| character | person who takes part in the action of a story, a novel, or drama; can be animals, imaginary creatures, or aliens. |
| characterization | the method a writer uses to develop characters. |
| chorus | in ancient Greece, a group of singers and dancers who participated in religious festivals and dramatic performances. In poetry, the refrain. |
| cliche | a trite or stereotyped phrase or expression. |
| climax | the high or turning point in a story. |
| conflict | the struggle between opposing forces that moves the plot forward. |
| connotation | the attitudes and feelings associated with a word. |
| consonance | the repetition of consonant sounds at the end of words. Ex: lonely afternoon. ("n" in both words) |
| denotation | the literal or dictionary definition of a word |
| description | process a writer uses to create a picture of a scene. |
| dialect | a particular variety of language spoken in one place by a distinct group of people. |
| dialogue | conversation between two or more people |
| diction | an author's choice of words based on their correctness, clearness, or effectiveness. |
| digraph | 2 successive letters that make a single sound. Ex: ea in bread or ng in sing. |
| dipthong | speech sound beginning with 1 vowel sound and moving to another vowel sound within the same syllable. Ex: oy in boy |
| discourse | formal, extended expression of thought on a subject, either spoken or written. |
| drama | a play; form of literature intended to be performed before an audience. |
| epic | long narrative that tells of the deeds and adventures of a hero/heroine. |
| epigraph | a quotation on the title page of a book, or a motto heading a section of work, suggesting what the theme or central idea will be. |
| epithet | an adjective or phrase used to express the characteristic of a person or thing in poetry. Ex: rosy-fingered dawn. |
| essay | brief work of nonfiction that offers an opinion on a subject. Purpose: express ideas and feelings, analyze, inform, entertain or persuade. |
| exposition | writing intended to make clear or explain something using 1 or more of the following methods: identification, definition, classification, illustration, comparison, and analysis. Ex: in a novel, this helps the reader to understand the background in which the work is set. |
| fable | short, simple story that teaches a lesson. |
| fairy tale | short story written for, or told to, children including elements of magic, such as fairies, elves, and/or goblins. |
| falling action | the action that occurs after the climax. Sometimes called the resolution or denouement. |
| fiction | imaginative works of prose, primarily the novel and the short story. |
| figurative language | language that communicates ideas beyond the ordinary or literal meaning of the words. |
| figure of speech | literary device used to create special effect or feeling by making some type of comparison. Ex: antithesis, hyperbole, metaphor, metonymy, personification, simile, and understatement. |
| folktale | a short narrative handed down through oral tradition; usually has cumulative authorship. |
| foreshadowing | a writer's use of hints or clues to indicate events that will occur in a story. |
| genre | a category of literature. |
| hero/heroine | a legendary figure often of divine descent who is endowed with great strength or ability. |
| analogy | comparison of two things, which are alike in several respects;exlains thought process or line of reasoning |
| anaphora | repetition of same word/s at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences, commonly in conjunction with climax or parallelism. |
| anecdote | a brief story used in an essay to illustrate a point |
| aphorism | a brief, often clever saying that expresses a principle, truth or observation about life |
| apostrophe | direct address of a person or personified thing, either present or absent. Venting or intense emotion in the prose |
| chiasmus | crossing parallelism, where second part of grammatical construction is balanced or paralleled by the first, only in reverse order. Ex: "learned unwillingly" to "gladly forgotten" |
| conceit | brief or extended elaborate, usually intellectually ingenious poetic comparison or image, such as an analogy or metaphor. Ex: a beloved is compared to a ship. |
| ellipsis | sudden leap from one topic to another |
| euphemism | substitution of a milder word/phrase for a harher/blunt one |
| hyperbole | exaggeration used for emphasis |
| irony | conveying a reality different from and usually the opposite in appearance or expectation |
| litotes | form of understatement generated by denying the opposite of the word to be used |
| malapropism | ludicrous misuse of words that sound alike |
| metaphor | comparison identifing 1 thing with a dissimilar thing & transferring some of the qualities of second to the first |
| neologism | a new word, usage, or expression |
| non sequitur | a statement that does not follow logically from anything previously said |
| onomatopoeia | pronunciaton of words suggests meaning. Ex: buzz |
| oxymoron | paradox reduced to 2 words, usually adj.-noun used to emphasize contrasts Ex: eloquent silence |
| palindrome | word, verse, sentence that reads the same backward or forward |
| parable | short fiction that illustrates an explicit moral lesson; often religious |
| paradox | contradictory, unbelievable, or absurd statement |
| parallelism | recurrent syntactical similarity; adds balance, rhythm, & clarity |
| personification | animal or inanimate object given human attributes |
| rhetorical question | question not answered by the writer, because its answer is obvious or obviously desired; used for effect, emphasis, provocation or to draw a conclusion |
| simile | comparison between 2 things essentially unlike, but resembling each other in some way; often unfamiliar to familiar thing |
| synecdoche | form of metaphor where the part stands for the whole; any portion, section, or main quality for the whole thing itself or vice versa |
| tautology | series of self-reinforcing statements that cannot be disproved because they depend on the assumption that they are already correct |
| understatement | form of speech which contains an expression of less strength than what would be expected |
