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| Alliteration | The repetition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words, usually at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable |
| Allusion | A brief reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in history or literature |
| Anaphora | The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs |
| Assonance | The repetition of internal vowel sounds in nearby words that do not end the same |
| Blank Verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| Caesura | A pause within a line of poetry that contributes to the rhythm of the line. It can occur anywhere within a line and need not be indicated by punctuation. |
| Cliché | An idea or expression that has become tired and trite from overuse |
| Connotation | Associations and implications that go beyond a word’s literal meaning and deriving from how the word has been commonly used and the associations people make with it |
| Consonance | A common type of near rhyme that consists of identical consonant sounds preceded by different vowel sounds |
| Couplet | Two consecutive lines of poetry that usually rhyme and have the same meter |
| Diction (formal, informal, middle, poetic) | A writer’s choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and figurative language, which combine to help create meaning |
| End Rhyme | The rhyme comes at the end of the lines |
| End-Stopped Line | A poetic line that has a pause at the end. They reflect normal speech patterns and are often marked by punctuation. |
| Enjambment | When one line ends without a pause and continues into the next line for its meaning. This is also called a run-on line. |
| Exact Rhyme/ True Rhyme | Words that share the same stressed vowel sounds as well as sharing sounds that follow the vowel. |
| Eye Rhyme | Words that look alike but do not rhyme at all |
| Figurative Language | Ways of using language that deviate from the literal, denotative meanings of words in order to suggest additional meanings or effects. |
| Foot | The metrical unit by which a line of poetry is measured. A foot usually consists of one stresses and one or two unstressed syllables. |
| Free Verse | Refers to poems characterized by their nonconformity to established patterns of meter, rhyme, and stanza. |
| Hyperbole | A boldly exaggerated statement that adds emphasis without intending to be literally true. |
| Iambic Meter | Consists of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable |
| Imagery | Appeals to the five senses |
| Irony | Uses contradictory statements or situations to reveal a reality different from what appears to be true |
| Metaphor | Makes a comparison between two unlike things without using the words like or as |
| Meter | When a rhythmic pattern of stresses recurs in a poem |
| Metonymy | A type of metaphor in which something closely associated with a subject is substituted for it |
| Mood | The feeling that a literary work conveys to a reader |
| Narrative Poem | A poem that tells a story |
| Onomatopoeia | Refers to the use of a word that resembles the sound it denotes |
| Paradox | A statement that initially appears to be contradictory but then, on closer inspection, turns out to make sense |
| Parallelism | words, phrases, or clauses. It strengthens connections among ideas and actions or sequences described. |
| Personification | Human characteristics are attributed to nonhuman things |
| Point of View | Refers to who tells us a story and how it is told |
| Prose Poem | A kind of open form poetry that is printed as prose and represents the most clear opposite of fixed form poetry |
| Pun | A play on words that relies on a word’s having more than one meaning or sounding like another word |
| Quatrain | A four line stanza |
| Refrain | Line or lines that are repeated |
| Rhyme Scheme | Describes the pattern of end rhymes |
| Satire | The literary art of ridiculing a folly or vice in order to expose or correct it |
| Simile | A comparison between two things using the words like or as |
| Slant Rhyme | The sounds are almost but not exactly alike |
| Stanza | Refers to a grouping of lines set off by a space |
| Sonnet | A fixed form of lyric poetry that consists of fourteen lines, usually written in iambic pentameter |
| Speaker | The voice used by an author to tell a story or speak a poem |
| Symbol | A person, an object, an image, a word, or an event that evokes a range of additional meaning beyond and usually more abstract than its literal significance |
| Synecdoche | A kind of metaphor in which a part of something is used to signify the whole |
| Syntax | Sentence structure—the ordering of words into meaningful verbal patterns such as phrases, clauses, and sentences |
| Theme | The central meaning or dominant idea in a literary work |
| Tone | The author’s implicit attitude toward the reader or the people, places, and events in a work as revealed by the elements of the author’s style |
| Understatement | The opposite of hyperbole, understatement refers to a figure of speech that says less than is intended |
| Epistrophe | The repetition of a word at the end of successive clauses or sentences |
| Synesthesia-ideas | Characters, places, etc. that are presented in such a way that they appeal to more than one of the five senses (Mixing the five senses) |
