Poetry-Specific Terminology Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering poetry-specific terms, definitions, and concepts.

Alliteration

The repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of words.

Anaphora

Repeating the structure of a line for effect, although the words may sometimes differ slightly.

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds.

Onomatopoeia

Words whose sound copies the sound of the thing being described.

Plosive

Words which begin with or contain a 'hard' sound: the basic plosives in English are t, k, p, d, g, and b.

Rhyme

Often at the end of a line ('end rhyme'), but can also be internal, slant, eye or rich.

Rhyme Scheme

The pattern of rhymes at the end of each line, conventionally annotated with letters.

Sibilance

A soft 's' or a hissing sound produced by an abundance of this letter in the poem.

Speaker

The persona who 'speaks' the poem; preferable to assuming that the poet is the one speaking to us.

Stanza

The blocks of lines into which a poem is divided; often wrongly called 'verses' (e.g., Tercet: three lines; Quatrain: four lines).

Apostrophe

To address someone or something not present, which may be a personified object or idea; to do so is to apostrophise.

Caesura

A conscious pause in the line of poetry, usually signalled by punctuation.

Couplet

A two line unit of poetry - often rhyming, which makes it a 'rhyming couplet'. Shakespeare's scenes often end with a rhyming couplet.

End-stop

An end-stop occurs when a line of poetry ends with a full-stop or clear punctuation mark. The opposite of enjambement.

Enjambement

When the line runs onto the next - the opposite of end-stopped.

Inversion, or Inverted Syntax

When the poet changes the standard subject-verb-object word order for effect. Usually it places the emphasis on particular phrases that the poet wishes to highlight.

Syntax

The order of words/ clauses so as to form sentences.