Vocab List 1

Alliteration

Repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together.

Allusion

An indirect reference to someone/something that is known from history, literature religion, politics, sports, science, or another branch of culture.

Analogy

Comparison made between two things to show how they are alike.

Antagonist

Opponent who struggles against or blocks the hero, or protagonist, in a story.

Antihero

Central character who lacks all the qualities traditionally associated with heroes. May lack courage, grace, intelligence, or moral scruples.

Static Character

A character who does not change much over the course of a story.

• Can be caused by lack of time in the story for them to grow.

Dynamic character

A character who changes in some important way as a result of the story’s actions.

Connotation

The associations and emotional overtones that have become attached to a word or phrase, in addition to its strict dictionary definition.

Diction

A speaker of writer’s choice of words.

Figurative Language

Words which are inaccurate if interpreted literally, but are used to describe. Similes and metaphors are common forms.

Flashback

A scene that interrupts the normal chronological sequence of events in a story to depict something that happened at an earlier time.

Foreshadowing

The use of hints and clues to suggest what will happen later in a plot.

Imagery

The use of language to evoke a picture or a concrete sensation of a person, a thing, a place, or an experience.

Irony

A discrepancy between appearances and reality.

Juxtaposition

Poetic and rhetorical device in which normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are placed next to one another, creating an effect of surprise and wit.

• Also a form of contrast by which writers call attention to dissimilar ideas, images, or metaphors.

Metaphor

A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without the use of such specific words of comparison as like, as, than, or resembles.

Motif

A recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation used throughout a work (or in several works by one author), unifying the work by tying the current situation to previous ones, or new ideas to the theme.

Protagonist

The central character in a story, the one who initiates or drives the action.

• Usually a hero or antihero.

Symbol

A person, place, thing, or event that has meaning in itself and that also stands for something more than itself.

Theme

the insight about human life that is revealed in a literary work.