Literary Terms

Question 1

Alliteration

Answer 1

Close repetition of initial consonant sounds of accented syllables (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”)

Question 2

Anaphora

Answer 2

Repetition of an opening word or phrase in a series of lines or clauses (“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”)

Question 3

Antithesis

Answer 3

The placing of one sentence or one of its parts against another to form a balanced contrast of ideas (“Give me liberty or give me death”)

Question 4

Assonance

Answer 4

Close repetition of the vowel sound of accented syllables or important words (“Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade”)

Question 5

Asyndeton

Answer 5

The elimination of conjunctions where they are expected

Question 6

Caesura

Answer 6

A marked pause within a line (“Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope”)

Question 7

Chiasmus

Answer 7

The crosswise arrangement of contrasted pairs (“Featured like him, like him with friends possessed”)

Question 8

Connotation

Answer 8

What a word suggests beyond its basic definition

Question 9

Consonance

Answer 9

Close repetition of the consonant sounds anywhere but the beginning of accented syllables or important words (“Like to the lark at break of day arising.”)

Question 10

Couplet

Answer 10

Two successive lines linked by rhyme

Question 11

Denotation

Answer 11

The basic dictionary meaning of a word

Question 12

End Rhyme

Answer 12

Rhymes that occur at the ends of the lines

Question 13

End-stopped

Answer 13

A line that ends with a punctuation mark

Question 14

Enjambment

Answer 14

A line that does not end with a punctuation mark but continues into the next line (“Like to the lark at break of day arising/ From sullen earth”)

Question 15

Hyperbole

Answer 15

An exaggeration for emphasis

Question 16

Imagery

Answer 16

Representation through language of sense experience (visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory)

Question 17

Internal rhyme

Answer 17

A rhyme in which one or both of the rhyme words occur(s) within the line (“So long lives this, and this gives life to thee”)

Question 18

Inversion

Answer 18

The natural word order is reversed (“By chance or nature’s changing course, untrimmed”)

Question 19

Verbal irony

Answer 19

A figure of speech in which what is meant is opposite of what is said

Question 20

Metaphor

Answer 20

A figure of speech in which two unlike things are implicitly compared

Question 21

Metonymy

Answer 21

The use of something closely related, usually in time and space, to the thing actually meant (“And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries”)

Question 22

Metrical feet

Answer 22

Four kinds to know: iamb (v/), trochee (/v), spondee (//), anapest (vv/)

Question 23

Onomatopoeia

Answer 23

The use of words that mimic their meaning in their sound (for example, boom, click, plop)

Question 24

Oxymoron

Answer 24

The use of two successive words that contradict each other (“eternal summer”)

Question 25

Paradox

Answer 25

An apparently self-contradictory statement (“love is not love”)

Question 26

Parallelism

Answer 26

Ideas arranged in similar grammatical structures (Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope”)

Question 27

Personification

Answer 27

A figure of speech in which human attributes are given to an animal, object, or concept (“Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines”)

Question 28

Polysyndeton

Answer 28

The repetition of conjunctions in a series of coordinate words, phrases, or clauses

Question 29

Rhyme

Answer 29

Repetition of the accented vowel sound and all succeeding sounds in important words (e.g. day-May, temperate-date, despising-arising, shaken-taken)

Question 30

Rhyme scheme

Answer 30

A fixed pattern of end-rhymes

Question 31

Silmile

Answer 31

A figure of speech in which a concrete object stands for a general idea (e.g. rose-love)

Question 32

Synecdoche

Answer 32

The use of the part for the whole (“It is the star to every wand’ring bark”)

Question 33

Theme

Answer 33

The central idea of a literary work, usually related to human character or condition

Question 34

Tone

Answer 34

The speaker’s attitude towards the subject, the audience, or themselves