English II Week 2

Round character

A character who is realistic and complex

Flat character

a character who is one-dimensional and uncomplicated

Imagery

visually descriptive language in a literary work

Polysyndeton

the use of several coordinating conjunctions used successively for style

Hypophora

when a writer raises a question and then immediately answers it

Amplification

embellishing a sentence to increase its worth or clarity

Litotes

expressing an affirmative through the opposite of its contrary

Foreshadowing

warning or indication of a future event

Flashback

a scene set at an earlier time than the main story

Anastrophe

the inversion of the usual order of words or phrases

Colloquialism

an informal word or phrase specific to a region

Assonance

repetition of non-rhyming vowel sounds

Onomatopoeia

formation of a word from a sound associated with the name

Synesthesia

ideas presented as appealing to multiple senses or other senses than expected

Antithesis

contrasting ideas expressed through parallelism of words that are strongly contrasted with one another

Catharsis

the purgation of emotions at the end of a literary work

Metonymy

substituting the adjunct of a thing in place of naming it directly

Dramatic irony

a discrepancy between the reader’s knowledge and a character’s knowledge

Situational irony

incongruity between what is expected to happen and what actually happens

Verbal irony

using words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of the literal meaning

Motif

a dominant idea, theme, or feature that occurs throughout a literary work

Syntax

the arrangement of words and phrases

Oxymoron

when contradictory words appear in conjunction to create a single meaning

Satire

the use of humor, irony, or ridicule to expose and criticize stupidity or vices

Antimetabole

the repetition of words in successive clauses but in transposed order