Poetry Vocab

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Aliteration

The repetition of the initial consonant sounds in words close to each other

Allusion

A reference to a well-known person, event, or work of art

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds with nearby words

Ballad

A narrative poem that tells a story, often of love or adventure, typically set to music

Caesura

A pause or break in a line of poetry, usually occurring in the middle

Consonance

The repetition of consonant sounds, typically at the end or middle of words

Couplet

Two lines of poetry that rhyme and usually have the same meter

Diction

The choice of words and style of expression in writing or speech

Elegy

A poem of serious reflection, often a lament for the dead

Irony

A contrast between expectation and reality

Metaphor

A figure of speech that compares two unlike things without using “like” or “as”

Meter

The structured rhythm of a poem, usually determined by the number of stressed and unstressed syllables

Onomatopoeia

Words that imitate the sounds they represent

Oxymoron

A figure of speech in which two contradictory terms are combined

Personification

Giving human qualities to non-human things

Pun

A play on words, where a word has a double meaning or sounds like another word, often creating humor or irony

Refrain

A line or group of lines that is repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza

Rhyme Scheme

The pattern of rhyming words at the end of each line of a poem

Stanza

A grouped set of lines in a poem, often separated by a blank line

Tone

The attitude or feeling conveyed by the writer toward the subject or audience