Column A
Imagery
What is words that create a picture in the reader's mind. Usually this involves the five senses. Authors often use imagery in conjunction with metaphors, similes, or figures of speech.
Diction
What is word choices.
Personification
What is giving human-like qualities to something that is not human. “The tired old truck groaned as it inched up the hill.”
Irony
What is when the opposite of what you expect to happen does happen.
Foreshadowing
What is when an author gives hints about what will occur later in a story.
Anecdote
What is a brief recounting of a relevant episode. They are often inserted into fictional or non fictional texts as a way of developing a point or injecting humor.
Dialect
What is a particular form of language spoken by a particular group of people
Onomatopoeia
What is the use of a word which imitates or suggests the sound that the thing makes. Snap, rustle, boom, murmur
Synesthesia
What is a description involving a “crossing of the senses.” Examples: “A purplish scent filled the room.” “I was deafened by his brightly-colored clothing.”
Oxymoron
What is when contradictory terms are grouped together and suggest a paradox - "wise fool, eloquent silence, jumbo shrimp."
What is a common or familiar type of saying.
Alliteration
What is the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of words. “Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore”
Allusion
What is an indirect reference to something (usually a literary text, although it can be other things commonly known, such as plays, songs, historical events) with which the reader is supposed to be familiar, like Greek mythology.
Hyperbole
What is exaggeration. Example: “My mother will kill me if I am late.”
Parallelism
What is sentence construction which places equal grammatical constructions near each other, or repeats identical grammatical patterns. It is used to add emphasis, organization, or sometimes pacing to writing
Ellipsis
What is the deliberate omission of a word/phrase from prose done for effect by author. “The whole day, rain, torrents of rain.” The term is related to ellipse, which is the three periods used to show omitted text in a quotation.
Assonance
What is repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. “From the molten-golden notes”
Antithesis
What is two opposite or contrasting words, phrases, or clauses, or even ideas, with parallel structure. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”
Juxtaposition
What is placing things side by side for the purpose of comparion. Authors often use it to make a point
Aphorism
A terse statement which expresses a general truth or moral principle. An aphorism can be a memorable summation of the author's point.
Metonymy
What is replacing an actual word or idea, with a related word or concept. “Relations between London and Washington have been strained,”, often used w/ body parts"I couldn't understand his tongue"
Epistrophe
What is the repetition of a word at the end of successive clauses or sentences
Synecdoche
What is a kind of metonymy when a whole is represented by naming one of its parts, or vice versa. “The cattle rancher owned 500 head.” “Check out my new wheels.”
Allegory
What is a story, fictional or non fictional, in which characters, things, and events represent qualities or concepts. The interaction of these characters, things, and events is meant to reveal an abstraction or a truth.
Anaphora
What is the repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences or clauses in a row. This is a deliberate form of repetition and helps make the writer's point more coherent.“I came, I saw, I conquered"