| A | B |
|---|
| assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds in conjunction with dissimilar consonant sounds. |
| Aphorism | A general truth or observation about life |
| Onomatopoeia | The use of words that imitate sounds. Examples are buzz |
| Alliteration | The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or accented syllables. |
| Consonance | The repetition of similar final consonant sounds at the ends of words or accented syllables. |
| Denotation | A word’s objective meaning |
| Paradox | A statement that seems to be contradictory but that actually presents a truth. Because it is surprising |
| Refrain | A repeated line or group of lines in a poem or song. Most end stanzas. Many are nonsense lines |
| diction | A writer’s or speaker’s word choice. It is part of a writer’s style and may be described as formal or informal |
| Apostrophe | A figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses an absent person or a personified quality |
| Figurative language | Writing or speech not meant to be taken literally. Writers use this to express ideas in vivid and imaginative ways. |
| Speaker | The voice of a poem. Often the poet |
| Metaphor | A figure of speech in which one thing is spoken of as though it were something else. The identification suggests a comparison between the two things that are identified. |
| Image | A word or phrase that appeals to one or more of the five senses—sight |
| Style | Includes word choice |
| Figure of speech | An expression or a word used imaginatively rather than literally. |
| Personification | A figure of speech in which a nonhuman subject is given human characteristics |
| Simile | A figure of speech that makes a direct comparison between two subjects |
| Analogy | An extended comparison of relationships based on the idea that the relationship between one pair of things is like the relationship between another pair. Often involves explicit |
| Connotation | An association that a word calls to mind in addition to the dictionary meaning of the word. |
| Oxymoron | A figure of speech that combines two opposing or contradictory ideas |
| Symbol | Anything that stands for or represents something else. |
| Parallelism | The repetition of a grammatical structure. Used in poetry and in other writing to emphasize and to link related ideas. |
| Sensory language | The descriptive or figurative language used in literature to create word pictures |
| Imagery | Writing or speech that appeals to one or more of the five senses. |
