Figurative Language and Poetry

Question 1

apostrophe

Answer 1

the addressing of a usually absent person or a usually personified thing rhetorically - “Love, who needs you?”

Question 2

conceit

Answer 2

an elaborate or strained metaphor - “Life is a bowl of cherries”

Question 3

hyperbole

Answer 3

extravagant exaggeration - “I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse.”

Question 4

metonymy

Answer 4

a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated - referring to the president as the White House

Question 5

synecdoche

Answer 5

a figure of speech in which a part is put for the whole - “hungry mouths to feed” “new set of wheels”

Question 6

synesthesia

Answer 6

a subjective sensation or image of a sense other than the one being simulated - “From what I’ve tasted of desire” Robert Frost

Question 7

assonance

Answer 7

relatively close juxtaposition of similar sounds especially of vowels; repetition of vowels without repetition of consonants - “He fell asleep under the cherry tree”

Question 8

ballad

Answer 8

a narrative composition in rhythmic verse suitable for singing; four line stanzas; passed down orally - “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” by Elvis Presley

Question 9

blank verse

Answer 9

poetry written in unrhymed but metered lines written in Iambic Pentameter - “To die-to sleep. To sleep-perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!” Shakespeare

Question 10

consonance

Answer 10

recurrence or repetition of consonants especially at the end of stressed syllables without the similar correspondence of vowels - “Mike likes his new bike.”

Question 11

heroic couplet

Answer 11

a pair of rhyming iambic pentameters, much used by Chaucer and the poets of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Alexander Pope - “Cooper’s Hill” by Sir John Denham

Question 12

iamb

Answer 12

a metrical foot consisting of one short syllable followed by one long syllable or of one unstressed soluble followed by one stressed syllable - amuse, portray, delight

Question 13

iambic pentameter

Answer 13

a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short syllable followed by one long syllable - “Her vestal livery is but sick and green

Question 14

elegy

Answer 14

a song or poem expressing sorrow or lamentation especially for one who is dead; a poem in elegiac couplets - “Lycidas” by John Milton

Question 15

enjambment

Answer 15

the running over of a sentence from one verse or couplet into another so that closely related words fall in different lines - “I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I / Did, till we loved” John Donne

Question 16

epic poetry

Answer 16

a long, narrative poem that is usually about heroic deeds and events that are significant to the culture of the poet - “The Iliad” by Homer

Question 17

free verse

Answer 17

poetry that does not rhyme or have a regular meter; no rules - “so much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow / glazed with rain / water / beside the white / chickens” “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams

Question 18

lyric poetry

Answer 18

a short, highly musical verse that conveys powerful feelings; rhyming; emotional - “I felt a funeral, in my brain” by Emily Dickenson

Question 19

ode

Answer 19

a lyric poem usually marked by exaltation of feelings and style, varying length of line, and complexity of stanza forms; celebrates something, is a lyric poem - “America” by Robert Creeley

Question 20

slant rhyme

Answer 20

a type of rhyme with words that have similar, but not identical sounds - worm and swarm

Question 21

terza rima

Answer 21

an arrangement of triplets, especially in iambs, that rhyme - “Shall we go dance the hay, the hay? / Never pipe could ever play / Better shepherd’s roundelay” in “Country Song” by Nicholas Breton

Question 22

villanelle

Answer 22

a chiefly French verse form running on two rhymes and consisting typically of five tercets and a quatrain in which the first and third lines of the opening tercet recur alternately at the end of the other tercets and together as the last two lines of the quatrain; 19 lines: 5 tercets, 1 quatrain, STRICT- “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke