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english
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Allusion | A direct or indirect reference to something which is presumably commonly known, such as an event, book, myth, place, or work of art. |
| Ambiguity | The multiple meanings, either intentional or unintentional, of a word, phrase, sentence, or passage. |
| Anachronism | The misplacing of any person, thing, custom or event outside its proper historical time. |
| Animal Imagery | A specialized type of comparison that employs animal characteristics or language to describe something. |
| Antagonist | The most prominent of the characters who oppose the protagonist or heroine or hero in a dramatic or narrative work. |
| Antithesis | The opposition or contrast of ideas; the direct opposite. |
| Apostrophe | A figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or a personified abstraction, such as liberty or love. |
| Archetype | A symbol, theme, setting, or character-type that recurs in different times and places in myth, literature, folklore, dreams, and rituals so frequently or prominently as to suggest that it embodies some essential element of 'universal' human experience. |
| Aside | A short speech or remark spoken by a character in a drama, directed either to the audience or to another character, which by convention is supposed to be inaudible to the other characters on stage. |
| Characterization | The representation of persons in narrative and dramatic works. |
| Connotation | The non-literal, associative meaning of a word; the implied, suggested meaning. |
| Denotation | The strict, literal, dictionary definition of a word, devoid of any emotion, attitude, or color. |
| Dichotomy | A division or contrast between two things that are or aren't represented as being opposed or entirely different. |
| Diction | Related to style, diction refers to the writer's word choices, especially with regard to their correctness, clearness, or effectiveness. |
| Direct Characterization | Attributes the qualities of a character in a description or commentary. |
| Dramatic Irony | When facts or events are unknown to a character in a play or piece of fiction but known to the reader, audience, or other characters in the work. |
| Dramatic Structure | The organization of conflict between characters in their world. The form of a play or film usually containing a beginning, middle and end. Also referred to as plot developments. |
| Epithet | A short, poetic nickname, often in the form of an adjective or adjectival phrase-attached to the normal name. |
| Ethos | Authority. It also includes something of charisma and individual character. It is whatever inspires trust in an audience. |
| External Conflict | The opposition between two characters, between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on. |
| Figurative Language | Writing or speech that is not intended to carry literal meaning and is usually meant to be imaginative and vivid. |
| First Person POV | Tells the story with the first person pronoun, "I", and is a character in the story. This narrator can be the protagonist, a secondary character, or an observing character. |
| Foil Character | A character that serves by contrast to highlight or emphasize opposing traits in another character. |
| Framing | Using the same features, wording, setting, situation, or topic at both the beginning and end of a literary work. |
| Genre | The major category into which a literary work fits. The basic divisions of literature are prose, poetry, and drama. |
| Hyperbole | A figure of speech using deliberate exaggeration or overstatement. |
| Imagery | The sensory details or figurative language used to describe, arouse emotion, or represent abstractions. |
| Indirect Characterization | Inviting readers to infer a character's qualities from characters' actions, speech or appearance. |
| Internal conflict | A protagonist struggling with his psychological tendencies. |
| Irony | The contrast between what is stated explicitly and what is really meant, or the difference between what appears to be and what is actually true. |
| Juxtaposition | The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development. |
| Limited Third Person POV | The narrator presents the feelings and thoughts of only one character, presenting only the actions of all the remaining characters. |
| Litotes | A form of understatement that involves making an affirmative point by denying its opposite. |
| Logos | The source that controls the universe, the written word or inspiration of God, or a logic and rational argument. |
| Metaphor | A figure of speech using implied comparison of seemingly unlike things or the substitution of one for the other, suggesting some similarity. |
| Mood | The prevailing atmosphere or emotional aura of a work. |
| Motif | A conspicuous recurring element, such as a type of incident, a device, a reference, or verbal formula, which appears frequently in works of literature. |
| Omniscient POV | An 'all-knowing' kind of narrator who has a full knowledge of the story's events and of the motives and unspoken thoughts of the various characters. |
| Oxymoron | A figure of speech wherein the author groups apparently contradictory terms. |
| Paradox | A statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to common sense but upon closer inspection contains some degree of truth or validity. |
| Pathos | A writer or speaker's attempt to inspire an emotional reaction in an audience - usually a deep feeling of suffering, but sometimes joy, pride, anger, humor, patriotism, or any of a dozen other emotions. |
| Persona | The speaker or voice of a literary work, i.e., who is doing the talking. Thus persona is the "I" of a narrative or the implied speaker of a lyric poem. |
| Personification | A figure of speech in which the author presents or describes concepts, animals, or inanimate objects |
| Pillars of Rhetoric | The deliberate exploitation of eloquence for the most persuasive effect in public speaking or in writing. |
| Plot | The structure in which the story is told. |
| Point of View | The perspective from which a story is told. |
| Political Commentary | An author's way of conveying an opinion or judgement about a specific political time period. |
| Protagonist | The chief character in a play or story, who may also be opposed by an antagonist. |
| Satire | A work that targets human vices and follies or social institutions and conventions for reform or ridicule. |
| Setting | The time, place, physical details, and circumstances in which a situation occurs. |
| Simile | An analogy or comparison implied by using an adverb such as like or as. |
| Situational Irony | When events turn out the opposite of what was expected; when what the characters and readers think ought to happen is not what does happen. |
| Social Commentary | A criticism or discussion by the act of using rhetorical means to provide commentary on issues in a society. |
| Soliloquy | A talking to oneself; the discourse of a person speaking to himself, whether alone or in the presence of others. It gives the illusion of being unspoken reflections. |
| Style | Any specific way of using language, which is characteristic of an author, school, period, or genre. |
| Symbol | Generally, anything that represents itself and stands for something else. |
| Synecdoche | A figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole or, occasionally, the whole is used to represent a part. |
| Synesthesia | When one kind of sensory stimulus evokes the subjective experience of another. |
| Syntax | The way an author chooses to join words into phrases, clauses, and sentences. |
| Theme Statement | A statement that unifies and controls an entire work. |
| Theme | The central idea or message of a work, the insight it offers into life. |
| Tone | Describes the author's attitude toward his material, the audience, or both. |
| Tragic Hero | Typically an admirable character who appears as the focus in a tragic play, but one who is undone by a hamartia - a tragic mistake, misconception, or flaw. |
| Verbal Irony | When the words literally state the opposite of the writer's (or speaker's) meaning. |
Created by:
26evasmi
Popular English Verbs sets