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Poetry Devices
Literary Devices
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Alliteration | Repeated consonant sounds at the beginning of words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines. |
| Assonance | Repeated vowel sounds in words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines. |
| Consonance | Repeated consonant sounds at the ending of words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines. |
| Cacophony | A discordant series of harsh, unpleasant sounds helps to convey disorder. |
| Euphony | A series of musically pleasant sounds, conveying a sense of harmony and beauty to the language. |
| Onomatopoeia | Words that sound like their meanings. |
| Rhyme | Words that have different beginning sounds but whose endings sound alike, including the final vowel sound and everything following it. |
| Rhythm | A regular pattern of accented syllables separated by unaccented syllables. |
| Allegory | A representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning. |
| Allusion | A brief reference to some person, historical event, work of art, or Biblical or mythological situation or character. |
| Ambiguity | A word or phrase that can mean more than one thing, even in its context |
| Apostrophe | Speaking directly to a real or imagined listener or inanimate object; addressing that person or thing by name. |
| Connotation | The emotional, psychological or social overtones of a word; its implications and associations apart from its literal meaning. |
| Contrast | Closely arranged things with strikingly different characteristics. |
| Denotation | The dictionary definition of a word; its literal meaning apart from any associations or connotations. |
| Euphemism | An understatement, used to lessen the effect of a statement; substituting something innocuous for something that might be offensive or hurtful. |
| Hyperbole | An outrageous exaggeration used for effect. |
| Irony | A contradictory statement or situation to reveal a reality different from what appears to be true. |
| Metaphor | A direct comparison between two unlike things, stating that one is the other or does the action of the other. |
| Metonymy | A figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing is referred to by something closely associated with it. |
| Oxymoron | A combination of two words that appear to contradict each other. |
| Paradox | A statement in which a seeming contradiction may reveal an unexpected truth. |
| Personification | Attributing human characteristics to an inanimate object, animal, or abstract idea. |
| Pun | Word play in which words with totally different meanings have similar or identical sounds. |
| Simile | A direct comparison of two unlike things using “like” or “as.” |
| Symbol | An ordinary object, event, animal, or person to which we have attached extraordinary meaning and significance |
| Synecdoche | Indicating a person, object, etc. by letting only a certain part represent the whole. |
| Verse | One single line of a poem arranged in a metrical pattern |
| Stanza | A division of a poem created by arranging the lines into a unit, often repeated in the same pattern of meter and rhyme throughout the poem; a unit of poetic lines (a “paragraph” within the poem). |
| Rhetorical Question | A question solely for effect, which does not require an answer. |
| Rhyme Scheme | The pattern established by the arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines, |
| Enjambment | The continuation of the logical sense — and therefore the grammatical construction — beyond the end of a line of poetry. |
| Blank Verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| Free Verse | lines with no prescribed pattern or structure |
| Couplet | a pair of lines, usually rhymed; this is the shortest stanza |
| Heroic Couplet | a pair of rhymed lines in iambic pentameter |
| Quatrain | a four-line stanza, or a grouping of four lines of verse |
| Fixed Form | A poem which follows a set pattern of meter, rhyme scheme, stanza form, and refrain |
| Ballad | A narrative poem written as a series of quatrains in which lines of iambic tetrameter alternate with iambic trimeter with an xaxa, xbxb rhyme scheme with frequent use of repetition and often including a refrain. |
| French Ballad | Consists of three seven or eight-line stanzas using no more than three recurrent rhymes, |
| Epigram | A pithy, sometimes satiric, couplet or quatrain comprising a single thought or event and often aphoristic with a witty or humorous turn of thought |
| Epitaph | A brief poem or statement in memory of someone who is deceased, used as, or suitable for, a tombstone inscription |
| Haiku | Japanese form of poetry consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. |
| Limerick | A light or humorous form of five chiefly anapestic verses of which lines one, two and five are of three feet and lines three and four are of two feet, with a rhyme scheme of aabba. |
| Lyric | Poem intended to be told in musical form. |
| Ode | Any of several stanzaic forms more complex than the lyric, with intricate rhyme schemes and irregular number of lines, generally of considerable length |
| Sonnet | A fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter with a prescribed rhyme scheme; its subject was traditionally love. |
| Shakespearean Sonnet | A style of sonnet used by Shakespeare with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg |
| Italian Sonnet | A form of sonnet made popular by Petrarch with a rhyme scheme of abbaabba cdecde or cdcdcd |
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abigalecarson
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