| A | B |
|---|
| Antithesis | any disposition (placement, arrangement) of words that serves to emphasize a contrast of opposition of ideas. |
| Locution | style of speaking; phraseology. |
| Germane | closely related; relevant; pertinent; relevant. |
| Genre | a category of artistic composition marked by distinctive style, form or content. |
| Conceit | an elaborate, fanciful metaphor, especially of a strained or far-fetched nature |
| Pithy | brief, forceful, and meaningful in expression; full of vigor, substance, or meaning; terse; forcible: a pithy observation; sententious. |
| Pretentious | Claiming or demanding a position of merit or distinction, especially when unjustified. |
| Motif | a recurring subject, theme, idea, etc., esp. in a literary, artistic, or musical work. |
| Bellicose | warlike in nature; pugnacious. |
| Double entendre | a double meaning; a word given in a context so that it can be understood two ways, esp. when one meaning is risqué. |
| Elegy | a mournful, plaintive, sorrowful poem(lament); not to be mixed up with eulogy. |
| Sardonic | marked by scornful or bitter derision; mocking; cynical; sneering. |
| Epigraph | an inscription on a building, statue or the like; or, an apposite quotation at the beginning of a book, chapter, etc. |
| Ellipsis | the deliberate omission of a word or group of words which are readily implied in the context. |
| Metonymy | A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated (such as "crown" for "royalty"). It is also the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it, such as describing someone's clothing to characterize. |
| Nostalgic | a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time: a nostalgia for his college days. |
| Redundant | repetitive |
| Antipathy | natural, basic or habitual repugnance; aversion. |
| Metaphysics | thinking about thinking |
| Dichotomy | a division into two mutually exclusive, opposed or contradictory groups. |
| Disenfranchise | - to deprive a person of some right or vote |
| Propaganda | information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc. |
| Elliptical clause | Most of the time when we use a comparison using than or as, we leave words out. This is technically called an elliptical clause--a clause with an ellipsis. An ellipsis is words left out. |
| Persona | the assumed identity by the writer in a literary work. |
| Subtext | underlying or implicit meaning, as of a literary work. |
| Imperative mood | to express a request or command. |
| Laudatory | expressing praise |
| Synesthetic imagery | sound produces the visualization of a color. |
| Anaphora | The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs. |
| Excoriate | To tear or wear off the skin of; abrade. |
| Alliteration | repetition of the initial consonant sound. |
| Voice | the way your words "sound" on the page; the originality of your writing through syntax and word selection |
| Syntax | the way in which words and clauses are ordered and connected so as to form sentences. |
| Diction | types and arrangements of words so as to affect the meaning of the composition. |
| Embedding quotations | enclosed within a narrative or discussion as part of that discussion. |
| Imagery | creating a mental picture with sensory words. |
| tone | the author’s attitude to the reader or to the subject matter |
| Didactic | instructive; designed to impart information, advice, or some doctrine or morality or philosophy. |
| Parallel structure | the repetition of the same syntactic forms in order to achieve an effect of balanced arrangement. |
| Comma splice | the use of a comma, rather than a semicolon, colon, or period, to separate related main clauses in the absence of a coordinating conjunction: often considered to be incorrect or undesirable, esp. in formal writing. |
| Allegory | a story or visual image involving the parallel between two (or more) levels of meaning in a story so that its persons or events correspond to their equivalents in a system of ideas or a chain of events external to the tale. |
| Exposition | the setting forth of a systematic explanation of or argument about any subject. |
| Epithet | a brief descriptive phrase that captures the essence of the concept (“man’s best friend”) |
| Colloquial | the use of informail expressions appropriate to everyday speech rather than to the formality of writing, and differing in pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar. |
| Vignette | any brief composition or self-contained passage, usually a descriptive prose sketch, essay, or short story. |
| Extrapolation | to infer an unknown from something that is known. |
| Pronoun antecedent | the noun/pronoun to which the pronoun refers. |
| Satire | irony, sarcasm or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice or stupidity. |
| Active Voice | the subject does the action. |
| Passive Voice | the action is done onto the subject. |
| Loose sentence | loose sentence - A sentence that adds modifying elements after the subject, verb, and complement.The meaning of a loose sentence can be easily understood in the very beginning of the sentence, unlike a periodic sentence where the subject-verb of the base sentence is completed at the end |
| periodic sentence | A periodic sentence is a sentence that is not grammatically complete until the final clause or phrase. It is Joey for whom we are looking; |
| cleft sentence | a complex sentence (i.e. having a main clause and a dependent clause) which has a meaning that could be expressed by a simple sentence. Clefts typically put a particular constituent into focus. This focusing is often accompanied by a special intonation.it + conjugated form of to be + X + subordinate clause . ex- It is Joey whom I love |
| syllogism | a deductive inference consisting of two premises and a conclusion, all of which are categorial propositions. The subject of the conclusion is the minor term and its predicate the major term; the middle term occurs in both premises but not the conclusion.some temples are in ruins; all ruins are fascinating; so some temples are fascinating is valid |
| enthymeme | a partial syllogism;a syllogism or other argument in which a premise or the conclusion is unexpressed. |
| hyperbole | obvious an intentional exaggeration |
| Aphorism | a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation, as “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton). |
| Litotes- | understatement, esp. that in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary, as in “not bad at all.” |
| Banal | devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed; trite |
| Ambiguous | possibility of having more than one meaning; doubtful or uncertain in regards to interpretation. |
| Synecdoche | substituting a part for the whole, bringing to the expression broader meaning |
| ethos | in rhetoric, the character or emotions of a speaker or writer that are expressed in the attempt to persuade an audience. It is distinguished from pathos, which is the emotion the speaker or writer hopes to induce in the audience |
| pathos | which is the emotion the speaker or writer hopes to induce in the audience |
| logos | reason or the rational principle expressed in words and things, argument, or justification |
| Onomatopoeia | the formation of a word, as cuckoo or boom, by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent. |
| Resources of Language | all the devices of composition available to a writer, such as diction, syntax, sentence structure, and figures of speech |
| rhetorical features- | how a passage is constructed. The passage's organization and how the writer combines images, details, or arguments to serve his or her purpose |
| sentence structure | simple, compound, and complex. short sentences, simple sentences, or phrases. how long sentences are in are in a passage and the type |
| etymology | - tracing the origin and historical development of words |
| persona | the assumed identity by the writer in a literary work |
| rhetorical structure | how the author utilizes images, details and arguments to formulate their thesis |
| Apostrophe | a digression in the form of an address to someone not present, or to a personified object or idea, as “O Death, where is thy sting?” |
| Consonance | A special type of alliteration in which the repeated pattern of consonants is marked by changes in the intervening vowels--i.e., the final consonants of the stressed syllables match each other but the vowels differ. As M. H. Abrams illustrates in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, examples include linger, longer, and languor |
| Assonance | Repeating identical or similar vowels (especially in stressed syllabes) in nearby words. Assonance in final vowels of lines can often lead to half-rhymel; like neck and met |
| Apostrophe | a digression in the form of an address to someone not present, or to a personified object or idea, as “O Death, where is thy sting?” |
| Genre- | a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like |
| Pedantic | marked by a showy often tiresome display of learning and especially its trivial aspects. |
| Pastoral | relating to rural life; charmingly simple or serene |
| Euphemism | substituting a mild, indirect, or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, or offensive. These are considered bad form in academic/formal writing |
| Jargon | the language, esp. the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group |
| Invective | denunciatory or abusive language; violent censure or reproach |
| Oxymoron | a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “cruel kindness” or “to make haste slowly.” |
| Mixed metaphor | the use in the same expression of two or more metaphors that are incongruous or illogical when combined, as in “The president will put the ship of state on its feet.” |
| allusion | and indirect or passing reference to some event, person, place or artistic work; the nature and relevance of which is not explained by the writer but relies on the reader's familiarity with what is mentioned |
| refutation | disproof |
| pretentious | claiming or demanding a position of merit or distinction, especially when unjustified |
| diction | the choice of words used in a literary work |
| connotation | the further associations that a word suggests in addition to its straightforward dictionary definition |
| denotation | the textbook/literal definition of a word |
| rhetoric | principles governing the art of writing effectively, eloquently, and persuasively |
| extrapolation | to infer (an unknown) from something that is known; conjecture. |
| rhetorical question | something asked for the sake of persuasion rather than a genuine request for information |
| asyndetic | the omission of conjunctions, as in “He has provided the poor with Jobs, with opportunity, with self-respect.” |
| appositive | called a renamer, appositives greater modify that which is near to it (usually a noun). This information is not essential to the sentence, thus it is set off by commas: My mom, Nancy, likes to sew. |
| analysis | the separation of an intellectual or material whole into its parts in order to study the interrelationships of these parts |
| predicate nominative | the noun following a linking verb that restates or stands for the subject.For many of us on the team, the fans were an embarrassment . Embarrassment is the predicate nominative |
| juxtapostion | positioning side by side in order to emphasize differences |
| antecedent | word, phrase, or clause, usually a substantive, that is replaced by a pronoun or other substitute later, or occasionally earlier, in the same or in another, usually subsequent, sentence. In Jane lost a glove and she can't find it, Jane is the antecedent of she and glove is the antecedent of it. |
| direct object | a word or group of words representing the person or thing upon which the action of a verb is performed or toward which it is directed: in English, generally coming after the verb, without a preposition. In He saw it the pronoun it is the direct object of saw. |
| form reflects content | the structural design and patterning of a piece of writing displays its meaning |
| participle | verbal form used as an adjective. It does not specify person or number in English, but may have a subject or object, show tense, etc., as burning, in a burning candle, or devoted in his devoted friend. |
| explicit | directly stated or expressed |
| implicit | understood although not directly stated. |
| didactic | intended for instruction; instructive: |
