Show:
Poetry Terms
General Literary Terms
Syntax
Literary Terms
Figurative Language
100
the narrative voice of the poem.
What is the speaker?
100
the emotional quality of a passage or the perceived attitude of a speaker towards a thing or idea in the text.
What is tone?
100
the main idea or most important point in a sentence. Its position may be varied for effect.
What is climax?
100
ridiculing to show weakness in order to make a point, teach.
What is satirical?
100

Giving human qualities to inanimate objects or abstract ideas. Example: "The wind whispered secrets."

What is personfiication?

200

the Latin phrase meaning "seize the day"

What is Carpe Diem?

200
the author's choice of words based on their exact or connotative meaning for effect.
What is diction?
200

the repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences/lines in a row

What is anaphora?

200
instructive; author attempts to educate or instruct the reader.
What is didactic?
200

An exaggeration used for emphasis or humor. Example: "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse."

What is hyperbole?

300
the repetition of vowel sounds: “which din dims the light.”
What is assonance?
300
what a word suggests beyond its denotative (precise or dictionary) meaning, including social or emotional connections.
What is connotation?
300

in poetry, it is a strong, deliberate pause within a line

What is caesura?

300

an event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way

What is ambiguity?

300
a figure of speech in which some significant aspect of an experience is used to represent the whole experience.
What is metonymy?
400

a combination of sounds that produces a harsh or discordant effect.

What is Cacophony?

400
a clever little story; a short account of an interesting situation relevant to the text and used as example.
What is an anecdote?
400

the speaker addresses something or someone that cannot answer, something nonliving or inanimate.

What is an Apostrophe?
400

a literary device where the first part of a sentence or phrase is repeated in reverse order in the second part, creating a mirror-like effect

What is Chiasmus?
400

a type of metaphor in which parts of something is used to stand for the whole

What is synecdoche?

500
represented by a two syllable foot that contains one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
What is iambic meter?
500
a moment of insight, spiritual or personal; a character's sudden revelation about life or his or her own circumstances.
What is epiphany?
500
this type of sentence construction (or even paragraph construction) contains balanced grammatical structures that provide similar rhetorical value.
What is parallel sentence or parallel structure?
500

learned, polished, scholarly.

What is erudite?

500

the opposite of a hyperbole; an understatement

What is litote?