english vocab

Allegory

A narrative or description with a second meaning beneath the surface one.

Alliteration

Repetition of initial consonant sounds in accented syllables or important words.

Allusion

A reference, explicit or implicit, to something in literature or history.

Anaphora

Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines.

Apostrophe

Addressing something nonhuman, absent, or dead as if it were alive.

Assonance

Repetition of vowel sounds in accented syllables or important words.

Ballad

A short narrative poem written in a songlike stanza form.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Caesura

A pause within a line of poetry.

Connotation

What a word suggests beyond its literal dictionary meaning.

Couplet

Two successive lines of poetry, usually linked by rhyme.

Denotation

The literal or dictionary meaning of a word.

Didactic Poetry

Poetry written primarily to teach or preach.

Extended Figure

A figure of speech developed over many lines or an entire poem.

Figurative Language

Language that cannot be taken literally; it uses figures of speech.

Figure of Speech

A way of saying one thing and meaning another.

Free Verse

Poetry without regular meter or rhyme; rhythm develops naturally.

Foot

The basic unit of meter in poetry.

Iambic Meter

A meter in which most feet are iambs.

Irony

A contrast or incongruity between expectation and reality.

Verbal Irony

Saying the opposite of what is meant.

Dramatic Irony

When the audience knows more than the speaker.

Situational Irony

When what happens contradicts expectations.

Metaphor

An implied comparison between two essentially unlike things.

Meter

The regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which something closely related represents the whole.

Octave

An eight-line stanza or the first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.

Onomatopoeia

Words whose sounds imitate their meanings.

Oxymoron

Two contradictory words placed together.

Paradox

A statement that seems self-contradictory but is actually true.

Personification

Giving human qualities to animals, objects, or ideas.

Quatrain

A four-line stanza.

Rhythm

The patterned repetition of sounds or motion.

Rhyme Scheme

The pattern of rhymes in a poem.

Sentimental Poetry

Poetry that exaggerates emotion to manipulate the reader.

Shakespearean Sonnet

A sonnet with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.

Simile

A comparison between unlike things using like, as, or similar words.

Sonnet

A fourteen-line poem, usually written in iambic pentameter.

Stanza

A grouped set of lines repeated in pattern throughout a poem.

Symbol

Something that represents more than its literal meaning.

Synesthesia

The blending of two or more senses.

Terza Rima

An interlocking rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc.

Tetrameter

A metrical line containing four feet.

Understatement

Saying less than what is meant for effect.

Verse

Metrical or rhythmic language, as opposed to prose.

Figures of Speech

Metaphors, similes, hyperbole, are all examples of these.

Imagery

Sensory, appealing to all senses.

Detail

Factual information requiring no interpretation.

Syntax

The way words are put together to form sentences.

Point of View

Eyes through which we experience a work of literature.

Tone/Attitude

The speaker's feelings or opinion toward the subject matter.

Organization

The way a work of literature is built, held together, flows - stanzas, paragraphs, etc.

Diction

Word choice.

Connotative Language

Words with emotional baggage.