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

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