Term | Definition |
Alliteration | The repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together.
ex: The sneaky, slippery snake. |
Allusion | A reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics , sports, science, or some other branch of culture. |
Context clues | Using words surrounding unknown words to determine their meaning . |
Couplet | Two consecutive lines of poetry that work together. |
Drawing Conclusions | Use written cues to figure out something that is not directly stated . |
Free verse | Poetry that does not conform to a regular meter or rhyme scheme. |
Haiku | Presents a vivid picture and the poet's impression, sometimes with suggestions of spiritual insight. The traditional haiku is three lines long: the first line is five syllables, the second line is seven syllables, and the third line is five syllables. |
Hyperbole | A figure of speech that uses incredible exaggeration, or overstatement, for effect. |
Imagery | The use of language to evoke a picture or a concrete sensation of a person, a thing, a place, or an experience. |
Inferring | Giving a logical guess based on the facts or evidence presented using prior knowledge to help "read between the lines." |
Irony | In general, it is the difference between the way something appears and what is actually true. |
Meaning | What is the poem about? |
Metaphor | A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without the use of like or as. |
Mood | The feeling created in the reader by the poem or story. |
Onomatopoeia | The use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning.
ex: Education is a life raft in the ocean of America. |
Pattern | A combination of the organization of lines, rhyme schemes, stanzas, rhythm, and meter.( There are an innumerable variety of patterns in poetry.) |
Personification | A figure of speech in which an object or animal given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes.
ex: My computer stared at me, deciding if it wanted to cooperate. |
Rereading | Gives the reader more than one chance to make sense of challenging text. |
Rhyme/Rhyme Scheme | The repetition of vowel sounds in accented syllables and all succeeding syllables. The pattern of rhymes in a poem is called a rhyme scheme. |
Rhythm | A rise and fall of the voice produced by the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language. |
Setting | The time and place of the action. |
Simile | A figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two unlike things, using the words like or as.
ex: My shoes were like falcons, enabling me to fly across the basketball court. |
Sonnet | A fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter. |
Speaker | The imaginary voice assumed by the writer of a poem. |
Stanza | A group of lines in a poem considered as a unit. stanzas often function like paragraphs in prose. each stanza states and develops a single main idea. |
Summarizing | Guide the reader to organize and restate info, usually in written form. |
Symbols | A person, place, thing, or event that has meaning in itself and that also stands for something more than itself. |
Theme | The central message or insight into life revealed through the poem. |
Tone | The attitude a writer takes toward the subject of a work, the characters in it, or the audience. |