Help
Options
Didn't know it?
click below
click below
Knew it?
click below
click below
Don't Know
Remaining cards (0)
Know
retry
shuffle
restart
0:00
Embed Code - If you would like this activity on your web page, copy the script below and paste it into your web page.
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Literary Elements
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Anthimeria | Changing a word to a different part of speech. Most commonly used as a noun to a verb. The old lady turtled across the road. |
| Antonomasia | Replacing a name with a descriptive term. |
| Hyperbole | Exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally. |
| Synecdoche | A figure of speech where a part of a whole, is used to represent a whole. |
| Tmesis | Putting one word inside of another example: abso-fricken-lutly |
| Onomatopoeia | When a word is the sound it makes like "woosh" and it is used to put a sound in a readers head |
| Metonymy | Metonymy is like a metaphor but the thing replacing (vehicle) is related to the thing replaced (tenor) |
| Metaphor | When a word or phrase substitutes for another word or phrase: "The sun is a melting ice cream cone." |
| Litotes | When two negatives are used in a phrase and the statement could be positive (like not bad) or negative (like isn't great) This works via a double negative: "I'm not not mad." |
| Irony (NOT DRAMTIC) | The expression of meaning by using language that normally means multiple things. |
| Paronomasia | A pun or a play on words. To be funny! |
| Periphrasis | The use of indirect and circumlocutory speech or writing. |
| Chiasmus | When the writer says one thing and then says something very similar in the next line, but the grammatical structure has been reversed. Ex. "Live simply so that others might simply live. " |
| Apostrophe | When poets direct speech to an abstract concept or a person who is not physically present. |
| Personification | The attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form. |
| Allegory | A narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. |
| Catachresis | The use of a borrowed term for something that does not have a name of its own (i.e., as we thus speak of, “legs” of a table or the “foot” of a bed). |
| Parallelism | The use of successive verbal constructions in poetry or prose which correspond in grammatical structure, sound, meter, meaning, etc. |
| Trochee | A two-syllable metrical pattern in poetry in which a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed syllable |
| Anapest | A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable. The words “underfoot” and “overcome” are anapestic |
| Iamb | A metrical foot consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. |
| Pentameter | A line of verse that contains a total of ten syllables |
| Meter | The pattern of beats in a line of poetry |
| Rhyme | The repetition of syllables, typically at the end of a verse line. Rhymed words conventionally share all sounds following the word's last stressed syllable. |
| Rhythm | Basically a synonym for meter. Can extend a bit more to the whole poem/work. Ex. The rhythm in this passage fluctuates between verse and prose. |
| Volta | Italian word for “turn.” In a sonnet, the volta is the turn of thought or argument: in Petrarchan or Italian sonnets it occurs between the octave and the sestet, and in Shakespearean or English before the final couplet. |
| Quatrain | A piece of verse complete in four rhymed lines |
| Couplet | A pair of end-rhymed lines of verse that are self-contained in grammatical structure and meaning. |
| Stanza | A division of a poem consisting of two or more lines arranged together as a unit. More specifically, a stanza usually is a group of lines arranged together in a recurring pattern of metrical lengths and a sequence of rhymes. |
| End Rhyme | Rhyming of the final words of lines in a poem. |
| Eye Rhyme | Words that look the same but which are actually pronounced differently – for example “bough” and “rough”. |
| Anaphora | When a certain word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of clauses or sentences that follow each other. |
| Prose | Written or spoken language in its ordinary form, without metrical structure. |
| Verse | Writing arranged with a metrical rhythm, typically having a rhyme. |
| Internal Rhyme | Occurs within a single line of verse |
| Perfect Rhyme | When stressed vowel sound in both words are identical, as well as any subsequent sounds. For example, the words "kit" and "bit" |
| Imperfect Rhyme | When two words share just a vowel sound (assonance – e.g. “heart” and “star”) or in which they share just a consonant sound (consonance – e.g. “milk” and “walk”). |
| Identical Rhymes | Simply using the same word twice. |
| Allusion | A reference, typically brief, to a person, place, thing, event, or other literary work with which the reader is presumably familiar. |
| Anachronism | An error of chronology or timeline in a literary piece. In other words, anything that is out of time and out of place is an anachronism. |
| Anagnorisis | A moment of insight in a story’s plot in which a character, usually the protagonist, shifts from ignorance to awareness. |
| Consonance | The repetition of the same consonant sounds in a line of text. |
| Assonance | The repetition of similar vowel sounds takes place in two or more words in proximity to each other within a line of poetry or prose |
| Aside | A short comment or speech that a character delivers directly to the audience, or to himself, while other actors on the stage appear not to hear. Only the audience knows that the character has said something to them. |
| Caesura | A rhythmical pause in a poetic line or a sentence. It often occurs in the middle of a line, or sometimes at the beginning and the end. |
| Dactyl | A metrical foot, or a beat in a line, containing three syllables in which the first one is accented, followed by second and third unaccented syllables (accented/unaccented/unaccented) in quantitative meter, such as in the word “humanly.” |
| Dissonance | the use of impolite, harsh-sounding, and unusual words in poetry. In other words, it is a deliberate use of inharmonious words, phrases, or syllables intended to create harsh sounding effects. |
| Monologue | A literary device featuring a “speech” made by a single character in a work of literature or dramatic work (for theater or film) |
| Diction | The choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing. |
| Syntax | The arrangement of words and phrases to create sentences in a language. |
| Diction | Word choice |
| Syntax | Word order |
Created by:
user-1766796
Popular Literature sets