English Vocab

Asyndeton (e.g. I came, I saw, I conquered)

when conjunctions are omitted

Polysyndeton (e.g. We have ships and men and money)

intentional repetiton of conjunctions

Synecdoche (e.g. Nice wheels)

where a part of something represents the whole or the whole represents a part

Volta

dramatic shift in tone, argument, or theme in poetry

Anaphora (e.g. You better watch out, you better not cry…)

repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive sentences

Caesura

structural device - pause or break that falls within a ine of poetry

Assonance

repetition of vowel sounds within nearby words

Consonance

repetition of consonant sounds in words that are close together

Plosive alliteration

repetition of “p” and “b” sounds

Sibilance

repetition of “s” sounds

Dental alliteration

repetition of “d” and “t” sounds

Guttural alliteration

repetition of “g”, “r” and “c” sounds

Enjambment (e.g. My heart leaps up when I behold//A rainbow in the sky)

when a sentence or phrase runs past the end of a poetry line

Initial caesura (e.g. Dead! // One of them shot by sea in the east)

Pause near the start of the line

Medial caesura (e.g. Two households, // both alike in dignity)

Pause near the middle of the line

Terminal caesura (e.g. Then there's a pair of us — // don't tell!)

Pause near the end of the line

Chiasmus (e.g. fair is foul, and foul is fair)

technique where words, sentences or ideas are repeated in reverse order

Hard enjambment (e.g. I watched the/birds take flight)

line breaks mid-phrase, splitting words that grammatically belong together

Soft enjambment (e.g. I watched the birds/take flight at dawn)

line breaks at a more natural pause, but still without end-punctuation

Temporal marker

a word or phrase that shows when something happens

Neologism

newly created word

in media res

starting a story in the middle of the action, not at the beginning

logical dissonance

when someone holds two ideas that don’t make sense together, creating mental tension

synecdoche

when a part of something is used to represent the whole, or the whole represents a part

spondee

a metrical foot made of two stressed beats in a row