Glossary of Poetic Terms

Question 1

Diction

Answer 1

choice of words and/or grammatical construction

Question 2

connotation

Answer 2

suggested or associated meaning (skeleton=dead)

Question 3

Denotation

Answer 3

dictionary definition (skeleton = bony structure)

Question 4

Imagery

Answer 4

sensory content of poems; appeals to the five sense

Question 5

Tone

Answer 5

the attitude of the author, use of symbolism, irony, and figure of speech.

Question 6

Simile

Answer 6

items from different classes are compared by connective such as “like”, “as”, or “than”.

Question 7

Metaphor

Answer 7

items from different classes are implicitly compared, WITHOUT a connective such as “like”, or “as”

Question 8

Synecdoche

Answer 8

the whole is replace by a part, or the part by the whole “He has a new set of wheels”. “Give me a Hand”.)

Question 9

Personification

Answer 9

giving human qualities to abstractions or inanimate objects such as love, beauty, etc.

Question 10

apostrophe

Answer 10

an address to a person or thing literally listening. (“O Santa, bring me that Porsche I’ve always wanted…)

Question 11

Irony

Answer 11

without using figures of speech, speakers may use this device, saying things that are not to be taken literally.

Question 12

Verbal Irony

Answer 12

contrast between what is said and what is meant.

Question 13

Sarcasm

Answer 13

heavy, mocking verbal irony. Almost never found in literature.

Question 14

Understatement

Answer 14

saying less than what is meant.

Question 15

Hyperbole (overstatement)

Answer 15

exaggeration

Question 16

Situational Irony

Answer 16

contrast between what is intended and what is accomplished.

Question 17

Paradox

Answer 17

an apparent contradiction.

Question 18

Allusion

Answer 18

a reference in a literary work to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature.

Question 19

Symbol

Answer 19

an image loaded with significance beyond literal definition; suggestive rather than definitive.

Question 20

Natural Symbols

Answer 20

symbols recognized as standing for something in particular even by people from different cultures.

Question 21

Conventional Symbols

Answer 21

symbols which people have agreed to accept as standing for something other than themselves.

Question 22

Stanza

Answer 22

a rhythmical unit in which lines of poetry are commonly arranged.

Question 23

Meter

Answer 23

a pattern of stressed (accented) sounds in English poetry

Question 24

Lamb (iambic)

Answer 24

one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. The iambic is the most common pattern in English poetry.

Question 25

Pentameter

Answer 25

five feet

Question 26

Perfect (exact) Rhyme

Answer 26

differing consonant sounds are followed by identical stressed vowel sounds, and the following sounds, if any, are identical (foe/toe, meet/fleet, buffer/rougher).

Question 27

Half-rhyme (off rhyme)

Answer 27

only the final consonant sounds of the word are identical; the stressed vowel sounds as well as the initial consonant sounds, if any, differ (soul/oil, mirth/forth, trolley/bully).

Question 28

Eye-rhyme

Answer 28

the sounds do not in fact rhyme, but the words look as though they would rhyme (cough/bough).

Question 29

Masculine rhyme

Answer 29

the final syllables are stressed and, after thier differing initial consonant sounds, are identical in sounds (stark/mark, support/retort).

Question 30

Feminine rhyme (double rhyme)

Answer 30

stressed rhyming syllables are followed by identical unstressed syllables (revival/arrival, flatter/batter).

Question 31

End rhyme (terminal rhyme)

Answer 31

the rhyming words occur at the ends of the lines.

Question 32

Internal rhyme

Answer 32

rhyme occurs within lines (“Each narrow cell in which we dwell.”)

Question 33

Alliteration

Answer 33

sometimes defined as the repetition of initial sounds (“All the awful auguries”, or “Bring me my bow of burning gold”.), and sometimes as the prominent repetition of a consonant (“after life’s fitful fever”).

Question 34

Assonance

Answer 34

the repetition, in words of proximity, of identical vowel sounds preceded and followed by differing consonant sounds. (Whereas tide and hide are rhymes, tide and mine are assonantal).

Question 35

Consonance

Answer 35

the repetition of identical consonant sounds and differing vowel sounds in word in proximity (fail/feel, rough/roof, pitter/patter). Sometimes consonance is more loosely defined as the repetition of a consonant (fail/peel).

Question 36

Onomatopoeia

Answer 36

the use of words that imitate sounds, such as hiss or buzz.

Question 37

Couplet

Answer 37

a stanza of two lines, usually, but not necessarily, with end-rhymes.

Question 38

Triplet (or tercet)

Answer 38

a three - line stanza, usually with one rhyme.

Question 39

Quatrain

Answer 39

a four - line stanza, rhymed or unrhymed.

Question 40

Sonnet

Answer 40

a closed, fixed form. A fourteen- line poem, predominantly in iambic pentameter.

Question 41

Villanelle

Answer 41

a closed, fixed French form; tecets and a quatrain

Question 42

Blank verse

Answer 42

English poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Question 43

Free verse (vers libre)

Answer 43

rhythmical lines varying in length, adhering to no fixed metrical pattern, and usually unryhmed. Seems formless but is not. Form or pattern often largely based on repetition and parallel grammatical structure.

Question 44

Lyric poem

Answer 44

a short poem, often songlike, with the emphasis not on narrative but on the speaker’s emotion or reverie. Whereas a narrative is set in the past, telling what happened, a lyric is set in the present, catching a speaker in a moment of expression (A lyric can, of course, glance forward or backwards).

Question 45

Elegy

Answer 45

a lyric poem that is melancholy or mournfully contemplative; sometime laments a death.

Question 46

Ode (hymn)

Answer 46

a lyric poem that is long, elaborate, and on a lofty theme such as immortality or a hero’s victory.

Question 47

Narrative poem

Answer 47

a poem whose main purpose is to tell a story.

Question 48

Metonymy

Answer 48

something is named that replaces something closely related to it. (In the following passage, James Shirley names certain objects (“Scepter and crown”, “scythe and spade”), using them to replace social classes (powerful people and poor people) to which they are related.