poet terms

Question 1

What is a lyric?

Answer 1

A short poem with one speaker who expresses personal thoughts and feelings. In classical Greece, it was a poem written to be sung, accompanied by a lyre.

Question 2

What is concrete poetry?

Answer 2

Poetry arranged spatially to create a visual effect.

Question 3

What is a dramatic monologue?

Answer 3

A narrative poem in which a single speaker is saying something to a silent audience, with the listener inferred.

Question 4

What is free verse?

Answer 4

Poetry that has no regular meter or rhyme scheme.

Question 5

What is a quatrain?

Answer 5

A four-line section of a poem.

Question 6

What is a refrain?

Answer 6

A line or lines repeated at regular intervals, often at the end of a stanza.

Question 7

What is a stanza?

Answer 7

A group of lines in a poem divided off from the others.

Question 8

What is a caesura?

Answer 8

A pause in a line which may or may not be punctuated.

Question 9

What is enjambment?

Answer 9

When one line in a poem is ‘run on’ to the next by an absence of punctuation at the end of the first line.

Question 10

What is a couplet?

Answer 10

Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme.

Question 11

What is figurative language?

Answer 11

Language that should not be taken literally, referring to another idea.

Question 12

What is a simile?

Answer 12

A comparison using ‘like’ or ‘as’.

Example: ‘the child’s eyes were like saucers’.

Question 13

What is a metaphor?

Answer 13

A comparison without the use of ‘like’ or ‘as’.

Example: ‘the patient was burning up with fever’.

Question 14

What is personification?

Answer 14

Giving human qualities to something that is not human.

Example: ‘your eyes speak eloquently of your love’.

Question 15

What is hyperbole?

Answer 15

An exaggeration.

Example: ‘he smiled from ear to ear’.

Question 16

What is allusion?

Answer 16

Reference to a person, place, or event which the reader already knows.

Question 17

What is sight imagery?

Answer 17

Visual imagery that helps us ‘see’ what is being described.

Question 18

What is sound imagery?

Answer 18

Aural imagery that helps us ‘hear’ what is being described.

Question 19

What is smell imagery?

Answer 19

Olfactory imagery that helps us ‘smell’ what is being described.

Question 20

What is taste imagery?

Answer 20

Gustatory imagery that helps us ‘taste’ what is being described.

Question 21

What is touch imagery?

Answer 21

Tactile imagery that helps us ‘feel’ what is being described.

Question 22

What is organic imagery?

Answer 22

Imagery relating to the organs.

Question 23

What is a symbol?

Answer 23

A person, thing, idea, or action that stands for something else, usually something concrete that stands for something abstract.

Question 24

What is rhythm?

Answer 24

The alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Question 25

What is rhyme?

Answer 25

The repetition of sounds at the end of the lines of a poem.

Question 26

What is half-rhyme?

Answer 26

Rhyming of the first and last consonants, with a different vowel sound in the middle.

Question 27

What is internal rhyme?

Answer 27

Rhyme within the same line of poetry.

Question 28

What is off-rhyme or slant-rhyme?

Answer 28

A rhyme that is not full and perfect but contains echoes of parts of words.

Question 29

What is eye-rhyme?

Answer 29

Words that look as though they would rhyme but don’t.

Question 30

What is assonance?

Answer 30

The repetition of vowel sounds.

Question 31

What is consonance?

Answer 31

The repetition of consonant sounds.

Question 32

What is alliteration?

Answer 32

The repetition of beginning consonant sounds.

Question 33

What is onomatopoeia?

Answer 33

Words that imitate sounds.

Question 34

What is cacophony?

Answer 34

A combination of harsh, unpleasant sounds or tones.

Question 35

What is euphony?

Answer 35

A combination of soothing, pleasant, soft sounds or tones.

Question 36

What is repetition?

Answer 36

Words or groups of words that are repeated.

Question 37

What is anaphora?

Answer 37

The repetition of an initial word or phrase.

Question 38

What is abstract?

Answer 38

An idea, concept, or belief that does not have an actual existence.

Question 39

What is ambiguity?

Answer 39

A situation in which more than one meaning or interpretation is possible.

Question 40

What is antithesis?

Answer 40

Contrasting or combining two terms, phrases, or clauses with opposite meanings.

Question 41

What is binary opposition?

Answer 41

A pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning.

Question 42

What is cadence?

Answer 42

The patterning of rhythm in natural speech or poetry without a distinct meter.

Question 43

What is colloquial language?

Answer 43

Ordinary everyday language and speech.

Question 44

What is connotation?

Answer 44

The implied meaning or feeling attached to a word or phrase.

Question 45

What is denotation?

Answer 45

The dictionary meaning of a word or phrase.

Question 46

What is dialect?

Answer 46

A form of language associated with a particular group of people.

Question 47

What is diction?

Answer 47

The author's choice of words.

Question 48

What is irony?

Answer 48

The opposite of what is meant or expected.

Question 49

What is verbal irony?

Answer 49

Occurs when a character says something which is the opposite of what they actually feel.

Question 50

What is dramatic irony?

Answer 50

Occurs when a character speaks lines that have another meaning to the audience, unknown to the character.

Question 51

What is juxtaposition?

Answer 51

Two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect.

Question 52

What is parody?

Answer 52

A work written in imitation of another work, usually to ridicule the original.

Question 53

What is a pun?

Answer 53

A play on words that have similar sounds but different meanings.

Question 54

What is a theme?

Answer 54

A general or universal idea explored by a writer.

Question 55

What is tone?

Answer 55

The mood, feeling, atmosphere, or attitude expressed in the poem.

Question 56

What is mood?

Answer 56

The feeling a poem arouses in the reader.

Question 57

What is a rhetorical question?

Answer 57

A question solely for effect, with no answer expected.

Question 58

What is an oxymoron?

Answer 58

A combination of two terms considered to be opposites or incompatible.

Question 59

What is a paradox?

Answer 59

An apparent contradiction that reveals an unexpected valid meaning.

Question 60

What is a speaker in poetry?

Answer 60

The voice of the poem; the persona who speaks the words of the poem.

Question 61

What is syntax in literature?

Answer 61

The actual way in which words and sentences are placed together in writing.