| A | B |
|---|
| Alliteration | repetition of the initial consonant sounds of words: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” |
| Allusion | a reference to a well-known person, character, place, event, concept, or literary work |
| Assonance | repetition of vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds: “Anna’s apples,” “the pond is long gone” |
| Consonance | the repetition of consonant sounds at the end of nonrhyming words or stressed syllables (•He struck a streak of bad luck) |
| Foreshadowing | a clue or hint to prepare readers for events that will happen later in a story |
| Hyperbole | a figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion, make a point, or evoke humor (you've asked me a million times) |
| Imagery | descriptive language that appeals to one or more of the five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell (the crimson liquid spilled from the neck of the white dove, staining and matting its pure, white feathers) |
| Irony | a contrast or discrepancy between appearance and reality, or between what is expected and what actually happens. |
| Dramatic Irony | the audience or reader knows information that characters do not (Juliet drinks the potion but is really not going to die) |
| Situational Irony | the actual outcome of a situation is the opposite of what is expected (The Gift of the Magi) |
| Verbal Irony | a person says one thing and means another (you get drenched in rain and scoff at yur wet clothes while your friends say, "lucky you") |
| Metaphor | an implied comparison between two unlike things (her talents blossomed) |
| Onomatopoeia | the use of a word or phrase that imitates or suggests the sound of what it describes (mew, hiss, crack, swish, murmur, buzz) |
| Oxymoron | a figure of speech in which opposite ideas are combined (wise fool, hateful love, jumbo shrimp) |
| Personification | a figure of speech in which an animal, an object, a force of nature, or an idea is given human form or characteristics ( |
| Pun | a play on words often humorous, usually relying on multiple meanings of a single word or of similar sounding words |
| Simile | a figure of speech that uses like or as to compare two seeminly unlike things (She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen) |
| Symbol/Symbolism | any object, person, place, or experience that exists on a literal level but also respresents something else, usually something abstract ("The Gift of the Magi", Della's hair is the symbol of her beauty) |
