Figurative Language definitions Part 1
A comparison between two unlike things using "like" or "as"
What is a simile?
"... Poised in midair
Like storybook sea monsters."
(Slam, Dunk, & Hook)
What is a simile?
"It helps that
the morning air glides cool
like a constant washcloth
against my face."
(Inside Out & Back Again)
What is the morning air to the feel of a cool washcloth?
"Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair."
(Mother to Son)
What is crystal stair symbolizes an easy life?
A group of lines in poetry
What is a stanza?
The pattern of end rhymes (example abab cdcd efef gg)
What is rhyme scheme?
"I wake up with
dragonflies
zipping through
my gut"
(Inside Out & Back Again)
What is onomatopoeia?
"Her eyes were now like stars: in all the world there was no other such beauty."
(The Invisible One)
What is her eyes to how stars shine?
"You can get there from here, though
there's no going home."
(Theories of Time and Space)
What is home symbolizes the past?
Giving human qualities to something non-human
What is personification?
An over-exaggeration for emphasis or effect
What is hyperbole?
" ... the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches
In a sky threatening rain ... "
(Theories of Time and Space)
What is a metaphor?
"My new teacher has brown curls
looped tight to her scalp
like circles in a beehive."
(Inside Out & Back Again)
What is curls to honey combs?
" ... Bring only
what you must carry - tome of memory,
its random blank pages."
(Theories of Time and Space)
What is random blank pages symbolize future memories?
The use of an object to represent an complex or abstract idea
What is symbolism?
Repetition of similar sounds at the beginning of words
What is alliteration?
"... Nothing but a hot
Swish of strings of silk
Ten feet out ..."
(Slam, Dunk, & Hook)
What is either alliteration or onomatopoeia?
"Muscles were a bright motor
Double-flashing to the metal hoop"
What is muscles to how motors work?
"She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow ... I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window."
(The House on Mango Street)
What is the place by the window symbolizing not being able to do the things she would like in life and feeling trapped?
Repetition of sentence structure such as similar sentence patterns or similar parts of speech.
What is parallel structure?
Vivid descriptive language that appeals to the five senses
What is imagery?
"I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you - Nobody - too?"
(I'm Nobody! Who are you?)
"My great-grandmother. I would've like to have known her, a wild horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry."
(The House on Mango Street)
What is "wild horse of a woman" to being independent?
"... With Mercury's
insignia on our sneakers,"
(Slam, Dunk, & Hook)
What is Mercury symbolizing their speed in playing basketball?
An indirect reference to a person, time, place, literary work, etc. that is brief.
What is allusion?