Rose Tree Media School District
Literary Terms
Name: _______________
Using the Word Bank, find the literary device that best fits the following phrase or definition.
1. _______________________A trite or overused expression or idea
2. _______________________A word whose sound imitates or suggests its
meaning (example: splash, slush, hush, bark, growl, hiss)
3. _______________________All of the meanings, associations, or emotions
that a word suggests
4. _______________________Contradictory words are combined (deafening
silence; jumbo shrimp; beautiful disaster)
5. _______________________Repetition of vowel sounds to create internal
rhyming: crumbling thunder.
6. _______________________Figurative expression that cannot be taken
literally (“Backseat driver” “Bought a lemon” “dropping like flies” “kicked the
bucket” for example). Colloquial metaphors, clichés
7. _______________________Language that appeals to the five senses.
8. _______________________Main character who struggles for something, who
transforms; the “hero”
9. _______________________Type of metaphor that makes a comparison
between two unrelated things using like or as
10. _______________________Giving human characteristics to the non-human
11. _______________________When the opposite of what you would expect
happens
12. _______________________Play, novel, or other narrative in which the main
character comes to an unhappy end
13. _______________________Reference to something: a familiar statement,
person, place, event, or thing (from literature, history, religion, myth, politics,
sports, science, art, etc.)
14. _______________________Repetition of the same consonant sound in words
that are close together (ex. where whistling woods whisper…)
15. _______________________Scene that interrupts the present to show events
in the past
Rose Tree Media School District
Literary Terms
Name: _______________
16. _______________________ A device in a story where an object or character
stands for something else – an abstract concept
17. _______________________Series of events that make up a story/sequence of
events in a story
18. _______________________Struggle between opposing characters or
emotions
19. _______________________The character who blocks the main character; the
“villain”
20. _______________________The dictionary definition of a word
21. _______________________The plot element directly following the climax
22. _______________________The overall message in a work of literature
23. _______________________The height of the action, the turning point
24. _______________________The use of clues to hint at events that will occur
later in the plot
25. _______________________Time AND place of a story
26. _______________________Type of writing that ridicules or makes fun of
27. _______________________Type or mode of writing that tells a story
28. _______________________Type or category
29. _______________________Language used by a particular region or group of
people distinguished by its vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar
30. _______________________When the audience knows what the characters in
a play (or film) do not know
Rose Tree Media School District
Literary Terms
Name: _______________
Word Bank
1. alliteration
2. allusion
3. antagonist
4. assonance
5. cliché
6. climax
7. conflict
8. connotation
9. denotation
10. dialect
11. dramatic irony
12. falling action or denouement
13. flashback
14. foreshadowing
15. genre
16. idiom
17. imagery
18. irony
19. narration or narrative
20. metaphor
21. onomatopoeia
22. oxymoron
23. personification
24. plot
25. protagonist
26. satire
27. setting
28. simile
29. symbol
30. theme
31. tragedy