Figurative Language Flashcards
pertains to any sentence with an active verb.
ACTIVE VOICE
An extended narrative (in poetry or prose) in which the characters and actions - and sometimes the setting as well - are contrived to make sense on the literal level and at the same time to signify a second, correlated order of characters, concepts, and events. In other words, an allegory carries a second, deeper meaning, as well as its surface story.
ALLEGORY
The repetition of a consonant sound at the beginning of several words in a sentence or a line of poetry.
ALLITERATION
A reference to another person, another historical event, another work, and the like. To understand allusions requires familiarity at the very least with Greek and Roman mythology, Judeo-Christian literature, and Shakespeare. Identify the impact of an allusion the same way you would a metaphor: consider the purpose of the comparison.
ALLUSION
Multiple meanings a literary work may communicate, especially two meanings that are incompatible.
AMBIGUITY
A person, scene, event, or other element in literature that fails to correspond with the time or era in which the work is set.
ANACHRONISM
A term that signifies a comparison of or similarity between two objects or ideas.
ANALOGY
The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive poetic lines, prose sentences, clauses or paragraphs. It is used to emphasize an idea.
ANAPHORA
Inverted syntax.
ANASTROPHE
A character or force in a work of literature that, by opposing the protagonist, produces tension.
ANTAGONIST
A rhetorical opposition or contrast of ideas by means of a grammatical arrangement of words, clauses, or sentences.
ANTITHESIS
A brief statement of an opinion or elemental truth.
APHORISM
A direct address to someone who is not present, to a deity or muse, or to some other power.
APOSTROPHE
An abstract or ideal conception of a type; a perfectly typical example; an original model or form.
ARCHETYPE
The repetition of a vowel sound within a group of words or lines.
ASSONANCE
The omission or absence of a conjunction between parts of a sentence.
ASYNDETON
A short poem in song format (sometimes with refrains) that tells a story.
BALLAD
A poet; in olden times, a performer who told heroic stories to musical accompaniment.
BARD
Unrhymed iambic pentameter.
BLANK VERSE
Harsh, discordant, or unpleasing sounds.
CACOPHONY
A pause in a line of poetry in order to make the meaning clear or to follow the natural rhythm of speech.
CAESURA
The works considered most important in a national literature or period; works widely read and studied.
CANON
Latin for “Seize the day.”
Carpe Diem
A purging of emotion, experienced by audiences especially through the pity they feel when witnessing the tragic hero’s fall from grace.
CATHARSIS
A group of characters in a play who comment on, but do not participate in, the action.
CHORUS
The high point, or turning point, of a story or play.
CLIMAX
An extended metaphor comparing two unlike subjects with dramatic effect.
CONCEIT
The associations or moods attached to a word. Words generally are positive, negative, or neutral. The connotation of words usually contributes to an author’s tone.
CONNOTATION
The repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants but with a change in the intervening vowel.
CONSONANCE
A pair of rhymed lines.
COUPLET
The dictionary definition of a word.
DENOTATION
The resolution that occurs at the end of a play or work of fiction.
DENOUEMENT
A regional speech pattern, often used to make a passage feel personal and authentic.
DIALECT
The specific words an author uses in her writing; word choice. An author’s choice of words serves to create meaning, portray characters, convey tone, develop themes, and much more.
DICTION
A formal meditative poem or lament for the dead.
ELEGY
Three periods that indicate words have been left out of a quotation. Ellipses are also used to create suspense.
ELLIPSES
A feeling of association or identification with an object or person.
EMPATHY
A line with a pause at the end. Lines that end with a period, comma, colon, semicolon, exclamation point, or question mark are end-stopped lines.
END-STOPPED:
In poetry, the use of successive lines with no punctuation or pause between them.
ENJAMBMENT
An extended narrative poem that tells of the adventures of a hero who is generally on a quest.
EPIC POEM
A short quotation or verse that precedes a poem (or any text) that sets a tone, provides a setting, or gives some other context for the poem.
EPIGRAPH
A moment of insight, spiritual or personal; a character’s sudden revelation about life or his own circumstances.
EPIPHANY
The ending of a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words, used to emphasize the word or group of words for emotional impact.
EPISTROPHE
An adjective or phrase that expresses a striking quality of a person or thing.
EPITHET
A term for the title character of a work of literature.
EPONYMOUS
To use an inoffensive or more socially acceptable word for something that could be inappropriate or offensive to some.
EUPHEMISM
Pleasing, melodious, pleasant sounds.
EUPHONY
The background and events that lead to the presentation of the main idea or purpose of a work of literature.
EXPOSITION
A return to an earlier time in a story or play in order to clarify present action or circumstances.
FLASHBACK
A minor character whose situation or action parallel those of a major character and thus by contrast set off or illuminate the major character.
FOIL
The combination of stressed and unstressed syllables that make up the metric unit of a line. The most commonly used feet are the iambic foot and the trochaic foot. (monometer/one foot, dimeter/two feet, trimeter/three feet, tetrameter/four feet, pentameter/five feet, hexameter/six feet (also called an Alexandrine), heptameter/seven feet (also called a fourteener), octometer/eight feet)
FOOT
Providing hints of things to come in a story or play.
FORESHADOWING
Poetry that doesn’t follow a prescribed form but is characterized by irregularity in the length of the lines and a lack of regular metrical pattern and rhyme.
FREE VERSE
Characterized by distortions or incongruities.
GROTESQUE
A tragic flaw or an unwitting error in judgment.
HAMARTIA
Excessive pride.
HUBRIS
Overstatement or gross exaggeration of an event or feeling.
HYPERBOLE
Language that appeals to one or another of the five senses and relies on vivid adjectives, similes, or metaphors.
IMAGERY
A Latin term for a narrative that starts not at the beginning of events but at some other critical point.
in media res
The use of words to express something other than - and often the opposite of - the literal meaning. There are three types of irony. Verbal irony contrasts what is said and what is meant. Situational irony contrasts what happens and what was expected to happen. Dramatic irony contrasts what the character thinks to be true and what the reader knows to be true.
IRONY
A pattern of speech and vocabulary associated with a particular group of people (i.e. medical doctors, computer analysts, teachers).
JARGON
The placement of one idea next to its opposite to make it more dramatic.
JUXTAPOSITION
A form of understatement in which the negative of the contrary is used to achieve emphasis or intensity.
LITOTES
Any poem in which a speaker expresses intensely personal emotion or thoughts. The term was originally applied to poems meant to be sung; now the term is sometimes used to refer to any poem that has a musical quality or is characterized by emotion, subjectivity, and imagination.
LYRIC
A figure of speech in with an implicit comparison is made between two things that are essentially dissimilar. Metaphors, unlike similes, do not use “like” or “as.”
METAPHOR
The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables or the units of stress patterns. (iambic: a light followed by a stressed syllable (balloon); trochaic: a stressed followed by a light syllable (soda); anapestic: two light followed by a stressed syllable (contradict); dactylic: a stressed followed by two light syllables (maniac); spondaic: two successive syllables with approximately equal strong stresses (man-made); pyrrhic: two successive syllables with approximately equal light stresses)
METER
A figure of speech in which the name of one thing is substituted for another with which it is closely associated.
METONYMY
The dominant tone in a piece or passage, typically the emotional quality of the scene or setting.
MOOD
A recurring element, an image or idea, in a work of literature, whose repetition emphasizes some aspect of the work (theme, plot, etc.).
MOTIF
A lyric poem that is serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style, and elaborate in its stanzaic structure.
ODE
A figure of speech in which a word when spoken imitates the sound associated with the word.
ONOMATOPOEIA
A combination of opposites; the union of contradictory terms.
OXYMORON
A story designed to suggest a principle, illustrate a moral, or answer a question. are allegorical stories.
PARABLE
A figure of speech that seeks to create mental ambiguity, which then forces the reader to pause and seek clarity. A seemingly contradictory statement which is actually true.
PARADOX
A composition that imitates the style of another composition normally for comic effect.
PARODY
The passive voice is used when something happens to someone.
PASSIVE VOICE
A reference to or a description of simple country life. Older pastoral poems usually include shepherds who live in an idyllic setting. Generally, the word “” suggests being carefree or returning to a time of innocence.
PASTORAL
Giving human characteristics to nonhuman things.
PERSONIFICATION
The plot line is the pattern of events, including exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
PLOT
The perspective from which the writer chooses to tell his or her story. Point of view can be in the first, second, or third person, and limited, omniscient, or objective.
POINT OF VIEW
The main character in a work of literature.
PROTAGONIST
A humorous play on words, using similar-sounding or identical words to suggest different meanings.
PUN
A line, part of a line, or group of lines repeated in the course of a poem, sometimes with slight changes.
REFRAIN
A quality of some fictional narrators whose word the reader can trust. There are both reliable and unreliable narrators, that is, tellers of a story who should or should not be trusted.
RELIABILITY
The repeating of a word or phrase for emphasis.
REPETITION
A question asked for effect, not in expectation of a reply. No reply is expected because the question presupposes only one possible answer.
RHETORICAL QUESTION
The echo or imitation of a sound.
RHYME
The sense of movement attributable to the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Although rhythm is sometimes used to signify meter, it includes tempo (pacing) and natural fluctuations of movement.
RHYTHM
A form of writing in which a subject (usually a human vice) is made fun of or scorned, eliciting amusement, contempt, or indignation. to provoke change or reform.
SATIRE
The total environment for the action in a novel or play. It includes time, place, historical milieu, and social, political, and even spiritual circumstances.
SETTING
A change in setting (place or time), tone, or speakers. is especially important for determining the overall purpose and tone of a poem.
SHIFT
A figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made using “like,” “as,” or “than” between two very different things in order to express an idea that is more familiar or understandable.
SIMILE
A speech in which a character in a play, alone on stage, expresses his or her thoughts. may reveal the private emotions, motives, and state of mind of the speaker. |also known as dramatic monologue.
SOLILOQUY
A fixed form of fourteen lines, normally in iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme conforming to or approximating one of two main types.
SONNET
The narrative voice of a poem.
SPEAKER
A group of lines that forms one division of a poem.
STANZA
The voice of the writer as reflected by types and lengths of sentences, word choice, use of figurative language and imagery.
STYLE
A form of reasoning in which two statements are made and a conclusion is drawn from them. begins with a major premise followed by a minor premise and a conclusion.
SYLLOGISM
An object that signifies something greater than itself.
SYMBOL
The addition of multiple conjunctions between the parts of a sentence.
SYNDETON
A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole.
SYNECDOCHE
In general, the order of words in a sentence that results in various sentence types used for a variety of rhetorical effects
SYNTAX
An insight into life conveyed by a poem or story.
is the main point the author wants to make with the reader, and is often a basic truth, an acknowledgement of our humanity, or a reminder of human beings’ shortcomings. This general insight is usually about life, society, or human nature.
often explore timeless and universal ideas.
Most are implied rather than stated explicitly.
Short works of fiction may have only one or two ; however, a novel may include many because of the number and depth of the characters and the numerous events within the plot.
THEME
The speaker or narrator’s (or author’s) attitude toward another character, a place, an idea or a thing, or the emotional quality of a passage.
TONE
Typically a drama in which a tragic hero experiences a fall from noble stature. The audience feels pity for the hero, but also fear that they, but for chance, could have been or might be in the hero’s place.
TRAGEDY
A person of greater than normal stature (more noble, more attractive, smarter, etc.) who falls from grace (station of power, respect, or goodness) due to a tragic flaw (hamartia), or, more typically, pride (hubris).
TRAGIC HERO
Saying less than the situation warrants. The contrast illuminates the truth.
UNDERSTATEMENT
Lines of poetry or metrical language in general, in contrast to prose.
VERSE
Any shift or turning point in a work of prose or poetry. may mark a shift in point of view, tone, mood, style, or any other manner of expression.
VOLTA
A figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses or to two others of which it semantically suits only one.
ZEUGMA
