Literary Devices and Rhetorical Terms: Definitions

Anaphora

The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or lines

Antecedent

Something that comes before or leads up to something else

Antecedent scenario

A specific event or scenario that happens before the story and is the reason for the story

Apostrophe

A direct address to an absent or imaginary person or a personified abstraction

Antithesis

A contrast of ideas presented by parallelism of words

Archetype

A typical example or recurrent symbol in literature, art, or mythology

Allusion

An indirect reference to a person, event, or literary work

Alliteration

Repetition of same consonant sound at beginning of words

Analogy

A comparison between two things for explanation or clarification

Assonance

Repetition of same vowel sound within words

Hyperbole

Exaggeration for emphasis or effect

Euphemism

Mild, indirect, or pleasant word used in substitute for one considered too harsh, blunt, or vulgar

Metonymy

Substituting one word for another closely related to it

Asyndeton

Omission of conjunctions between parts of a sentence

Polysyndeton

The use of many conjunctions for effect

Synecdoche

A figure of speech where a part represents the whole

In Media Res

Beginning a story in the middle of the action

In principio

At the beginning, or at the first

Jargon

Specialized language used by a profession or group

Colloquialism

Informal expressions used in everyday speech

Palindrome

A word or phrase that reads the same backwards and forwards

Anecdote

A short, amusing, or interesting phrase about a real incident or person

Litote

An understatement using the negative of the contrary

Oxymoron

Two opposite terms placed side by side

Onomatopoeia

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound it describes

Enjambment

Continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond a line of poetry

Epistrophe

Same word or group of words is repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses, sentences or poetic lines

Metaphor

Direct comparison between two unlike things by stating one is another (no "like" or "as")

Simile

Comparison between two unlike things, usually with "like" or "as"

Idiom

A common phrase with a meaning that isn't interpreted from the literal definition

Verisimilitude

Appearance of being true, real, or authentic within a work of fiction

Cacophony

Harsh, discordant sounds

Juxtaposition

The act or technique of placing two or more dissimilar elements, ideas, characters, or objects side by side to highlight their differences, similarities, or an unexpected relationship

Inversion (aka anastrophe)

Writer intentionally reverses normal subject-verb-object structure of a sentence