vocab 15

  • 1. CHIASMUS: In poetry, a type of rhetorical balance in which the second part is syntactically balanced against the first, but with the parts reversed. In prose this is called antimetabole.

  • Coleridge: “Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike.”

2. CAESURA: is a natural pause or break; a pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse, usually indicated by the sense of the line, and often greater than the normal pause. 

For example, one would naturally pause after “human” in the following line from Alexander Pope: “To err is human, to forgive divine.” 

3. ENJAMBMENT: the continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next.  Langston Hughes: A Dream Deferred” 

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore —
And then run? …

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load?

Or does it explode?“

4.  Anaphora: the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or lines. 

  • “I Have A Dream” speech     

  • “Jingle Bells” 

    5.  Antistrophe:  repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses. 

    • FDR speech (without warning) 


6. Epithet:  an adjective or adjective phrase appropriately qualifying a subject (noun) by naming a key or important characteristic of the subject

  • Catherine the Great 

7.  palindrome:  a word, line, verse, number, sentence, etc., reading the same backward as forward



  • racecar 

  • level

8.  mnemonic:   a technique of improving the memory



  • i before e except after c

  • fanboys 

9. Anthropomorphism:  is the attribution of human characteristics, emotions, and behaviors to animals or other non-human things (including objects, plants, and supernatural beings).

  • Winnie the Pooh 


  • Simba from Lion King

10. Zoomorphism is the device of giving animal-like qualities to anything that is not that animal such as humans, gods, and inanimate objects. Zoomorphism can also include giving the features of one animal to another, such as if a dog were to say “meow” in a cartoon or work of literature.


  • My brother eats like a horse 

  • The Holy Bible, Psalms (By Multiple Authors)