Summer Reading Vocab

Alliteration – the repetition of initial sound in successive or neighboring words

Allusion – a reference to something literary, mythological, or historical that the author assumes the reader will recognize

Aphorism – a concise statement that expresses succinctly a general truth or idea, often using rhyme or balance

Apostrophe – a figure of speech in which one directly addresses an absent or imaginary person, or some abstraction

Colloquialism – informal words or expressions not usually acceptable in formal writing

Connotation – the implied or associative meaning of a word

Diction – the word choices made by a writer

Didactic – having the primary purpose of teaching or instructing

Hyperbole – intentional exaggeration to create an effect

Idiom – an expression in a given language that cannot be understood from the literal meaning of the words in the expression; or, a regional speech or dialect

Irony – the use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning; or, incongruity between what is expected and what actually occurs

Juxtaposition – placing two elements side by side to present a comparison or contrast

Metaphor – a direct comparison of two different things

Metonymy – substituting the name of one object for another object closely associated with it (“The pen [writing] is mightier than the sword [war/fighting]”)

Oxymoron – an expression in which two words that contradict each other are joined

Polysyndeton – the use, for rhetorical effect, of more conjunctions than is necessary or natural

Satire – the use of humor to emphasize human weakness or imperfections in social institutions

Synecdoche – using one part of an object to represent the entire object (for example, referring to a car simply as “wheels”)

Syntax – the manner in which words are arranged into sentences

Vernacular – the everyday speech of a particular country or region, often involving nonstandard usage