literary terms

Allusion

Reference to a well-known person, place, event, or book; common Shakespearean allusions involve the Bible and mythology.

Pun

A play on words; using different meanings of the same word, e.g., 'Teachers have class.'

Hyperbole

Exaggeration for dramatic effect, e.g., 'It’s a thousand degrees.'

Alliteration

Repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words, e.g., 'the silence surged softly…'.

Simile

A comparison between two unlike things using 'like' or 'as'.

Metaphor

A comparison between two unlike things.

Onomatopoeia

Words that imitate sounds, such as 'sizzle,' 'thud,' 'clang,' and 'roar.'

Oxymoron

A figure of speech that combines two contradictory words placed next to each other, e.g., 'walking dead,' 'jumbo shrimp.'

Personification

A literary device where a non-living thing has the characteristics of a person, e.g., 'the moon's face'.

Dramatic Irony

A situation in a play or story where the audience knows something that the characters do not.

Idiom

A group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words, e.g., 'rain cats and dogs,' 'see the light.'

Stanza

A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a verse.

Imagery

Visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work.