Literary Terms Flashcards
Alliteration
Consecutive words with same beginning sound
Anaphora
Repetition in speech for emphasis
Anastrophe
Reversing word order
Aposiopesis
breaking off in the middle of a sentence
Apostrophe
addressing someone who isn’t present
Asyndeton
leaving out a conjunction
Chiasmus
repeating a phrase, but reversed
Ellipsis
repeating a phrase, but reversed
Hendiadys
connecting adjectives with and instead of modification
Hyperbole
Exaggeration
Hysteron proteron
reversing chronological order
Litotes
understatement through double negative
Metaphor
Comparison without like or as
Metonymy
calling something by one of its attributes
Onomatopoeia
Word representing a sound that sounds like it
Oxymoron
Contradiction
Personification
Giving an inanimate object human qualities
Pleonasm
using more words than necessary to say something
Polysyndeton
multiple conjunctions in a list
Prolepsis
speaking like a future event has happened
Simile
Comparison with like or as
Synedoche
calling something by the name of a part of it
Tmesis
Putting words in the middle of a compound word
Tricolon crescens
Three comparable, consecutive statements increasing in intensity
Zeugma
When a verb or adjective modifies multiple nouns