Abstract language - describing intangible things like ideas or emotions; also denoting
general qualities of a person or thing
Active voice - verb structure showing the subject taking action
Allegory - A story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning,
typically a moral or political one.
Alliteration - the repetition of initial consonant sounds in words in close proximity
Allusion - a brief reference to a commonly known historical or literary figure or work
Ambiguity - an intentional creation of multiple meanings, both the denotation and one or
more connotations
Anachronism - an error in chronology; especially: a chronological misplacing of persons,
events, objects, or customs in regard to each other
Analepsis – Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from
the current point the story has reached.
Analogy - a description or explanation of something unfamiliar through a description of
something more familiar
Anapestic - a meter of three syllables with the third syllable being stressed
Anaphora - the repetition of the same word or words at the start of two or more lines of
poetry
Anastrophe - an alteration of the normal order of words or phrases in a grammatical
construction, usually for rhetorical effect.
Antagonist - character(s) who is in conflict with the protagonist, attempting to prevent
him/her from reaching his/her goal or resolution
Antecedent action - action that came before the starting point of a work
Anthropomorphism - the attribution of a human form, human characteristics, or human
behavior to nonhuman things
Anticlimax - the placement of details of lesser importance where something greater is
expected
Antithesis - the use of contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas, balancing one
against the other in a strong opposition.
Aphorism - a succinct statement expressing an opinion or a general truth
Apostrophe - is the act of addressing some abstraction or personification that is not
physically present
Aside - a remark made by an actor, usually to the audience, that the other characters on
stage supposedly cannot hear
Assonance - the repetition of vowel sounds, but not of ending consonant sounds (not a
full rhyme)
Atmosphere - the prevailing mood of the work, usually established by the setting, thus
giving an emotional tone that influence's the reader's expectations and attitude toward
the piece
Auditory - a literal representation of an sound experience, or an object that can be
known by the sense of sound
Authorial voice - the discernible presence of the author as distinct from the narrator,
revealing a particular perspective, mood, and tone
Ballad stanza - a stanza of four lines, usually with a rhyme scheme of abab or abcb
Balanced Sentence - A balanced sentence is a sentence that employs parallel structure
of approximately the same length and importance.
Bildungsroman - a novel about the early years of somebody's life, exploring the
development of his or her character and personality
Blank Verse - unrhymed poetry that has a regular rhythm and line length, especially
iambic pentameter
Cacophony - the conscious use of a combination of harsh, unpleasant sounds
Caesura - a pause in a line of poetry created by the natural speaking rhythm or
punctuation, rather than by meter
Caricature - an exaggeration of a character's personal qualities for an intended effect
Carpe diem - poetry with the theme of "seize the day," specifically applied to youth and
love
Catalog - the use of lists of people, things, or attributes
Chiasmus - a rhetorical construction in which the order of the words in the second of two
paired phrases is the reverse of the order in the first.
Cliche - an overused expression, resulting in the loss of its freshness and clarity
Climax - the point of highest interest, the turning point of the plot
Colloquial - appropriate to, used in, or characteristic of spoken language or of writing that
is used to create the effect of conversation
Comedy - a work that involves both with and humor through irony and incongruity
Comedy of manners - a comedy that exposes the weakness and failure of pretentious of
a character
Complaint - a poem of lament or regret, with the speaker appealing for help
Complex Sentence - A sentence containing a subordinate clause or clauses
Conceit - An imaginative poetic image or writing that contains such an image, especially
a comparison that is extreme or far-fetched
Concrete language - diction referring to specific and tangible persons or things
Conflict - the struggle between two opposing forces; may be internal or external, a
conflict with nature, a human being, society, or the character's own self
Connotation - the emotional implications and associations of a word
Consonance - the repetition of the final consonants in stresses syllables, but with
different vowel sounds that precede them
Couplet - two consecutive lines of verse with the same end rhyme
Dactylic - a meter of three syllables with the first syllable being stressed
Denotation - the literal meaning of a word (dictionary definition)
Denouement - the falling action of the story, in which the solution or outcome is provided
Dialect - speech marked by regional or social differences
Digression - a part of something spoken or written that departs from the central topic or
line of argument, usually temporarily
Direct Characterization - exposition of a character through explicit means of narration
Double rhyme - a rhyme of stressed syllables followed by identical unstressed syllables
Dramatic irony - an incongruity of events or situations of which the character is unaware
but the audience sees clearly
Dramatic monologue - an extended passage in which the speaker addresses a nonpresent listener
Dynamic Character - a character who changes, is complex and is multi-faceted; a
character that is fully realized in most aspects of personality and who changes as a
result of actions and experiences.
Dystopia - an imaginary place where everything is as bad as it possibly can be
Elegy - a poetic meditation on death, usually for a specific person or condition
Emphasis - indication of relative importance of elements by means of climatic order,
placement, repetition, accumulation of detail, or contrast
Emphatic position - the usage of syntax by placing one element in a position to indicate
its importance
End rhyme - rhyme found at the end of a line of verse
End stop - a line of poetry complete as a grammatical unit
Enjambment - a line of poetry whose grammatical construction continues to the next line
Envoy - closing stanza of four lines with an abab rhyme scheme; addressed to a prince
or patron and often repeats the refrain line or provides a summary
Epigram - a concise, witty, and often paradoxical remark or saying
Episodic Development - a term applied to writing that consists of little more than a series
of incidents, with the episodes succeeding each other, with no particularly logical
arrangement or complication.
Epistrophe - repetition of a word or phrase at the end of consecutive clauses or
sentences for rhetorical effect
Epithet - a word (noun or adjective) used to point out a meaningful characteristic
Euphemism - term that replaces another, possibly objectionable, term in order to avoid
giving offense
Euphony - pleasant, easy to articulate sounds
Exposition - introductory material that establishes the setting and mood, as well as the
different characters and their relationships
Falling meter - meter in which the first syllable is stressed
First Person Narrator - the person telling the story, who is also a character within the
action of the story and therefore may be unreliable
Flashback - antecedent action that is recalled by the character through inner reflection
Foil - character who contrasts with another character, usually the protagonist, in order to
highlight the characteristics of a more important character
Foot - a measurement containing a certain number of heavy and light stresses
Foreshadowing - the preparation for later plot elements as revealed through action or
dialogue
Frame - a narrative that provides a framework for the main story, setting up the interior
story at the beginning and providing closure at the end
Free Verse - verse without a fixed metrical pattern, usually having unrhymed lines of
varying length
Full rhyme - a rhyme containing the same vowel but different preceding consonants; also
called a perfect rhyme
Grammatical inversion - inversion of word order for a particular effect or to fit meter
Gothic Literature - belonging to a genre of fiction characterized by gloom and darkness,
often with a grotesque or supernatural plot unfolding in an eerie or lonely location such
as a ruined castle
Gustatory - a literal representation of a taste experience, or an object that can be known
by the sense of taste
Horatian Satire - a satirical work that gently ridicules human absurdities and foibles,
often in the form of a comedy of manners
Humor - a type of comedy that is sympathetic with the foibles of human nature, exposing
the ridiculous and comical aspects of human affairs
Hyperbole - an overstatement used for humor or to height an particular effect
Iambic - meter with two syllables, the second syllable being stressed
Incongruity - the linking of two incompatible things, often used humorously
Incremental repetition - the use of repetition to effect successive minor changes in order
to enhance and intensify the meaning
Indirect Characterization - exposition of a character through implicit action
Interior monologue - a stream-of-consciousness experience on a non-verbalized level,
usually representing sensations or emotions
Internal rhyme - a rhyme within a line of verse, rather than at the end
Inverted Sentence - when the subject does not begin the sentence
Irony of situation - a situation which is the opposite of what both the character and the
audience might expect
Jargon - language that is used by a group, profession, or culture, especially when the
words and phrases are not understood or used by other people
Juvenalian Satire - a satirical work that harshly attacks vice and error with contempt
Juxtaposition - the placement of words or phrases side by side to achieve a particular
effect
Level of discourse - the use of formal or informal language for a particular purpose or
impression
Literal language - factual language, without embellishment
Loose sentence - a sentence that contains a subject and predicate with many modifiers,
tending to be long and rambling
Lyric verse - a shorter poem expressing an emotional state in a single, unified
impression
Malapropism - the misuse of a word through confusion with another word that sounds
similar, especially when the effect is ridiculous
Meter - an arranged pattern of rhythm in a line of verse
Metonymy - a figure of speech in which an attribute of something is used to stand for the
thing itself
Mock epic - a satirical work using the lofty style of the epic in relation to a trivial event or
object
Mood - the atmosphere created or suggested by the setting and diction
Motivation - the reason for a character's actions, usually based on his/her moral nature
and worldview
Naive narrator - narrator, such as a child, who does not understand the full implications
of the narrative
Nonce form - a poetic work that has only one stanza
Objective narrator - narrator who reports only what he/she can see and hear, without
comment
Octave - a stanza containing eight lines
Occasion - the immediate context of a poem that motivated the speaker's words
Ode - an elaborate poem with usually no set form, often using the apostrophe
Olfactory - a literal representation of a smelling experience, or an object that can be
known by the sense of smell
Omniscient narrator - narrator who can be inside the minds of all characters and reports
from multiple points of view
Onomatopoeia - a word that is an imitation of a sound
Oxymoron - a combination of ostensibly self-contradictory words
Paradox - a seemingly contradictory statement that is in fact well-founded, pointing
toward the truth
Parody - a work imitating a serious piece of literature in order to ridicule the work or the
author
Parallelism - the presentation of coordinate ideas in a coordinate manner, developing
one element of equal importance with another similar element
Passive voice - verb structure showing the subject receiving action
Pentameter - a line of poetry containing five metrical feet
Periodic sentence - a sentence that withholds the main clause until the end of the
sentence
Poetic License - deliberate misuse of or disregard for the normal rules of fact, style, or
grammar by a writer or speaker in order to achieve a special effect
Protagonist - the main character of the story, who is responsible for resolving the conflict
Pun - a play on words based on two similarly sounding words that have different
meanings
Quatrain - a stanza containing four lines
Refrain - one or more words repeated throughout a poem, usually at the end of a stanza
Resolution - the falling action of a story after the climax
Rhetorical accent - a stress on what would normally be an unaccented syllable, to clarify
the meaning or intention of a sentence
Rhetorical question - a question asked for effect, not to elicit a reply, to which the answer
is almost always negative
Rhyme scheme - a pattern of rhymes, shown by a letter of the alphabet for each rhyming
sound
Rising action - the introduction of the conflict that drives the work
Rising Meter - meter in which the last syllable is stressed
Romance - an imaginative work with exotic characters and settings, heroic events, love,
and the supernatural, with an occasional disregard of realism
Sarcasm - a statement, often expressing the opposite of the meaning of the words, that
is meant to hurt or show disapproval
Scansion - system for describing conventional rhythms, dividing lines into syllables and
analyzing the stressed and unstressed syllable to determine the predominant rhythm of
the poem
Sentimentalism - the conscious overindulgence of emotion in order to enjoy that
emotion, replacing ethical and intellectual judgment
Setting - the narrative background, including geographical location, time, historical
context, moral and religious conditions
Sibilance - have the sounds of s, z, or sh
Slant rhyme - a rhyme with close, but not perfect, rhyming sounds
Speaker - (Persona) the narrator of the work, who may or may not represent the author
Stereotype - an oversimplified character, lacking individualizing traits and reinforcing an
often-negative picture of a particular type of person
Stock Character - a character who is flat (not changing) and has only one or two
identifying traits
Stream of Consciousness - presenting the continuous flow of thoughts, ideas, images,
and feelings of a character the moment they run through his/her mind
Subordinate position - the usage of syntax by place one or more elements in a position
to indicate its lesser importance
Subplot - a separate line of events that are related in some way to the main plot
Stress - the accenting or emphasizing of a syllable
Structure - the plot or plan of a text
Synecdoche - a figure of speech in which the word for part of something is used to mean
the whole
Synesthesia - in literature, the description of one kind of sense perception using words
that describe another kind of sense perception, as in the phrase "shining metallic words"
Tactile - a literal representation of a touch experience, or an object that can be known by
the sense of touch
Third Person Omniscient Narrator - the person telling the story who is able to move from
the viewpoint of each or any character
Third Person Limited Narrator - the person telling the story from the viewpoint of usually
only one character
Tragedy - a work depicting the struggle of the protagonist in the face of inevitable defeat,
often through his/her own pride or other fatal flaw
Trimeter - a line of poetry containing three metrical feet
Triple rhyme - a rhyme with a rhyming stressed syllable, followed by two identical
unstressed syllables
Trochaic - meter with two syllables, the first syllable being stressed
Understatement - a statement whose literal sense is far less than the magnitude of the
subject or circumstance
Unreliable narrator - the person telling the story, who is also a character within the action
of the story and reports events from a personal bias and self-justification
Usage - the level of discourse that may be formal or informal, used to aid in the
characterization and tone of a work
Verbal irony - use of words to express the opposite of what they mean
Verisimilitude- the appearance of being true or real
Visual - a literal representation of a sight experience, or an object that can be known by
the sense of sight
Volta - a turn; a change in thought signaled by words like but, however, yet, etc.
Wit - the person telling the story from the viewpoint of usually only one character