Literary Terms Vocab #1

Question 1

Alliteration

Answer 1

the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.

Question 2

Allusion

Answer 2

an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference.

Question 3

Antagonist

Answer 3

a person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something; an adversary.

Question 4

Antithesis

Answer 4

a figure of speech in which an opposition or contrast of ideas is expressed by parallelism of words that are the opposites of, or strongly contrasted with, each other.

Question 5

Apostrophe

Answer 5

A writer or a speaker, using an apostrophe, detaches himself from the reality and addresses an imaginary character in his speech.

Question 6

Archetype

Answer 6

a reference to a concept, a person or an object that has served as a prototype of its kind and is the original idea that has come to be used over and over again.

Question 7

Assonance

Answer 7

refers to repetition of sounds produced by vowels within a sentence or phrase.

Question 8

Conflict

Answer 8

expressing a resistance the protagonist of the story finds in achieving his aims or dreams.

Question 9

Connotation

Answer 9

associations people make with words that go beyond the literal or dictionary definition.

Question 10

Consonance

Answer 10

repetition of sounds in quick succession produced by consonants within a sentence or phrase.

Question 11

Denotation

Answer 11

refers to the use of the dictionary definition or literal meaning of a word.

Question 12

Detail

Answer 12

an item of information that supports an idea or concept.

Question 13

Dialect

Answer 13

a particular form of a language that is peculiar to a specific region or social group.

Question 14

Dialogue

Answer 14

a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange.

Question 15

Diction

Answer 15

the distinctive tone or tenor of an author’s writings.

Question 16

Direct characterization

Answer 16

the process by which the personality of a fictitious character is revealed by the use of descriptive adjectives, phrases, or epithets.

Question 17

Epic simile

Answer 17

a detailed comparison in the form of a simile that is many lines in length.

Question 18

Epiphany

Answer 18

that moment in the story where a character achieves realization, awareness or a feeling of knowledge after which events are seen through the prism of this new light in the story.

Question 19

Euphemism

Answer 19

a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.

Question 20

Extended metaphor

Answer 20

when an author exploits a single metaphor or analogy at length through multiple linked vehicles, tenors, and grounds throughout a poem or story.

Question 21

Flashback

Answer 21

wherein the author depicts the occurrence of specific events to the reader, which have taken place before the present time the narration is following, or events that have happened before the events that are currently unfolding in the story.

Question 22

Foil

Answer 22

another character in a story who contrasts with the main character, usually to highlight one of their attributes.

Question 23

Foreshadowing

Answer 23

refers to the use of indicative word or phrases and hints that set the stage for a story to unfold and give the reader a hint of something that is going to happen.

Question 24

Hyperbole

Answer 24

exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.

Question 25

Idiom

Answer 25

a phrase or a fixed expression that has a figurative, or sometimes literal, meaning.

Question 26

Imagery

Answer 26

the author uses words and phrases to create “mental images” for the reader.

Question 27

Indirect characterization

Answer 27

the process by which the personality of a fictitious character is revealed through the character’s speech, actions, appearance, etc.

Question 28

Irony

Answer 28

refers to playing around with words such that the meaning implied by a sentence or word is actually different from the literal meaning.

Question 29

Juxtaposition

Answer 29

the author places a person, concept, place, idea or theme parallel to another.

Question 30

Limited narrator

Answer 30

the narrator only knows the thoughts and feelings of one character.

Question 31

Metaphor

Answer 31

refers to a meaning or identity ascribed to one subject by way of another.

Question 32

Meter

Answer 32

a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns, called feet.

Question 33

Metonymy

Answer 33

refers to the practice of not using the formal word for an object or subject and instead referring to it by using another word that is intricately linked to the formal name or word.

Question 34

Mood

Answer 34

refers to a definitive stance the author adopts in shaping a specific emotional perspective towards the subject of the literary work.

Question 35

Motif

Answer 35

any element, subject, idea or concept that is constantly present through the entire body of literature.

Question 36

Omniscient narrator

Answer 36

in which the narrator is a character in the story, but also knows the thoughts and feelings of all the other characters.

Question 37

Onomatopoeia

Answer 37

refers to words whose very sound is very close to the sound they are meant to depict.

Question 38

Oxymoron

Answer 38

allows the author to use contradictory, contrasting concepts placed together in a manner that actually ends up making sense in a strange, and slightly complex manner.

Question 39

Paradox

Answer 39

refers to the use of concepts or ideas that are contradictory to one another, yet, when placed together hold significant value on several levels.

Question 40

Personification

Answer 40

refers to the practice of attaching human traits and characteristics with inanimate objects, phenomena and animals.

Question 41

Plot

Answer 41

refers to the sequence of events and happenings that make up a story.

Question 42

Point of view (first, second, third person)

Answer 42

techniques are the first person, wherein the story is told by the narrator from his or her standpoint and the third person wherein the narrator does not figure in the events of the story and tells the story by referring to all characters and places in the third person with third person pronouns and proper nouns.

Question 43

Protagonist

Answer 43

the main character in a story

Question 44

Pun

Answer 44

wherein a word is used in a manner to suggest two or more possible meanings.

Question 45

Rhetorical shift

Answer 45

a movement in a piece from one point or idea to another.

Question 46

Rhyme

Answer 46

created by using words that produce the same, or similar sounds.

Question 47

Rhythm

Answer 47

recurrence of similar sounds in prose and poetry, creating a musical, gentle effect.

Question 48

Sarcasm

Answer 48

the use of irony to mock or convey contempt.

Question 49

Satire

Answer 49

refers to the practice of making fun of a human weakness or character flaw.

Question 50

Setting

Answer 50

used to identify and establish the time, place and mood of the events of the story.

Question 51

Simile

Answer 51

referring to the practice of drawing parallels or comparisons between two unrelated and dissimilar things, people, beings, places and concepts using “like” or “as”.

Question 52

Style

Answer 52

reveals both the writer’s personality and voice, but it also shows how he or she perceives the audience.

Question 53

Suspense

Answer 53

the intense feeling that an audience goes through while waiting for the outcome of certain events.

Question 54

Symbolism

Answer 54

a figure of speech where an object, person, or situation has another meaning other than its literal meaning.

Question 55

Synecdoche

Answer 55

uses a part of something to refer to the whole.

Question 56

Theme

Answer 56

links all aspects of the literary work with one another and is basically the main subject.

Question 57

Tone

Answer 57

the perspective or attitude that the author adopts with regards to a specific character, place or development.

Question 58

Understatement

Answer 58

refers to the practice of drawing attention to a fact that is already obvious and noticeable.

Question 59

Quatrain

Answer 59

a stanza of four lines, often rhyming in an ABAB pattern.

Question 60

Refrain

Answer 60

a line or set of lines at the end of a stanza or section of a longer poem or song–these lines repeat at regular intervals in other stanzas or sections of the same work.

Question 61

Sestina

Answer 61

consists of six stanzas with six lines each, followed by a three-line stanza at the very end, known as an envoi.

Question 62

Tercet

Answer 62

a poetic triplet is a tercet in which all three lines follow the same rhyme.

Question 63

Villanelle

Answer 63

a fixed form poem consisting of five tercets and a quatrain, and also follows a specific rhyme scheme using only two different sounds.

Question 64

Caesura

Answer 64

a pause in a line of poetry that is formed by the rhythms of natural speech rather than by metrics.

Question 65

Blank Verse

Answer 65

a poem with no rhyme but does have iambic pentameter.

Question 66

Free Verse

Answer 66

a poetic style that lacks a regular meter or rhyme scheme.

Question 67

Sonnet

Answer 67

14 lines in iambic pentameter with rhymes arranged according to a fixed scheme.