HELA 10 Literary Terms

Metonymy

Using a vaugle aggressive physical object to embody a more general idea

Synecdoche

Using a part of a physical object to represent the whole object

Apostrophe

Addressing someone of some personified abstraction that’s not physically present

Rhetorical Question

Asking a rhetorical question to the reader as a transition or as a thought-provoking tool before processing

Simile

Explicit comparison features “connector word”

Metaphor

Implicit comparison (when something is something else)

Allusion

An indirect reference to something else such as a person, place, thing, or other literary work, that the author assumes you understand-can be mythological, historical, literary

Personification

giving human qualities to inanimate objects

Onomatopoeia

Words that sound like what they mean

Hyperbole

Extreme exaggeration

Paradox/Oxymoron

using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense

Paradox

Statement that’s self-contradictory

Oxymoron

Contradictory/opposing words combined

Meiosis

Understatement

Litotes

Type of meiosis in which the writer uses a statement in the negative to create effect

Parallelism

When the writer establishes similar patterns of grammatical structure and length

Antithesis

Contrary ideas expressed in a balanced sentence

Idiom

A phrase that conveys a culturally understand, figurative meaning, different than the literal meaning of the words used

Chiasmus

Taking parallelism and deliberatley turning it inside out, creating a “crisscross” pattern

Ellipsis

Omitting a word implied by the previous clause

Asyndeton

Using no conjugations where some should be

Polysyndeton

Using more conjugations-more than necessary

Anaphora

Repetition of beginning clauses, phrases, or sentences

Episrophe

Repetition of concluding word

(En)analepsis

Repeating a word from the beginning of a clause at the end of the same clause

Anadiplosis

Repeating the last word of a clause at the beginning of the next clause

Climax

Arrangement in order of increasing importance

Alliteration

Repetition of the initial consonant in multiple words within a phrase

Euphemism

A figure of speech that replaces a harsh, direct, or unpleasant term w/ a milder, more indirect expression

Alliosis

Presenting alternatives in a balanced manner