Poetic Devices Flashcards
Define Alliteration
Repeated consonant sounds at the beginning of words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines.
Define Assonance
Repeated vowel sounds in words placed near each other, usually on the same adjacent lines.
Define Consonance
Repeated consonant sounds at the ending of words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines.
Define Cacophony
Discordant series of harsh, unpleasant sounds to help to convey disorder.
Define Euphony
Series of musically pleasant sounds, conveying a sense of harmony and beauty to the language.
Define Onomatopoeia
Words that sound like their meanings.
Define Repetition
Purposeful re-use of words and phrases for an effect.
Define Rhyme
Words that have different beginning sounds but whose endings sound alike, including the final vowel sound and everything following it.
Define Rhythm
Regular pattern of accented syllables separated by unaccented syllables.
Define Scansion
Conscious measure of the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line if poetry.
Define Allegory
A representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning. Often, it is a symbolic narrative that has not only a literal meaning, but a larger one understood only after reading the entire story or poem.
Define Allusion
Brief reference to some person, historical event, work of art, or Biblical or mythological situation or character.
Define Ambiguity
A word or phrase that can mean more than one thing, even in its context.
Define Analogy
A comparison, usually something unfamiliar with something familiar.
Define Apostrophe
Speaking directly to a real or imaged listener or inanimate object; addressing that person or thing by name.
Define Cliche
Any figure of speech that was once clever and original but through overuse has become outdated.
Define Connotation
The emotional, psychological or social overtones of a word; it’s implications and associations apart from it’s literal meaning.
Define Contrast
Closely arranged things with strikingly different characteristics.
Define Denotation
The dictionary definition of a word; it’s literal meaning apart from any associations or connotations.
Define Euphemism
An understatement, used to lessen the effect of a statement; substituting innocuous for something that might be offensive or hurtful.
Define Hyperbole
An outrageous exaggeration used for effect.
Define Irony
A contradictory statement or situation to reveal a reality different from what appears to be true.
Define Metaphor
A direct comparison between two unlike things, stating that one is the other or does the action of the other.
Define Metonymy
A figure of speech in which a person, place or thing is referred to by something closely associated with it.
Define Oxymoron
A combination of two words that appear to contradict each other.
Define Paradox
Statement in which a seeming contradiction may reveal an unexpected truth.
Define Personification
Attributing human characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, or abstract ideas.
Define Pun
Word play in which words with totally different meanings have similar or identical sounds.
Define Simile
Direct comparison of two unlike things using ‘like’ or ‘as’.
Define Symbol
Ordinary object, event, animal or person to which we have attached extraordinary meaning and significance.
Define Synecdoche
Indicating a person, object, etc. By letting only a certain part represent the whole.
Define Point of view
Author’s point of view concentrates on the vantage point of the speaker, or ‘teller’ of the story or poem.
Define Line
A series of units that don’t necessarily correspond to sentences, but rather to a series of metrical feet.
Define Verse
Single line of a poem arranged in a metrical pattern.
Define Stanza
Arranging the lines into a unit, often repeated in the same pattern of meter and rhyme throughout the poem.
What are the names for the Stanza forms?
-Couplet(2)
-Tercet(3)
-Quatrain(4)
-Quintet(5)
-Sestet(6)
-Septet(7)
-Octave(8)
Define Rhetorical question
A question solely for effect, which doesn’t require an answer.
Define Rhyme scheme
Pattern established by the arrangement of rhymes.
Define Enjambment
Continuation of the logical sense- and therefore the grammatical construction- beyond the end of a line of poetry.
Define Form
Arrangement or method used to convey the content.
Define Fixed form
A poem which follows a set pattern of meter, rhyme scheme, stanza form, and refrain.
Define Sonnet
Fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter with a prescribed rhyme scheme; it’s subject was traditionally love.
Define Imagery
The use of vivid language ti generate ideas and/or evoke mental images, nog only of the visual sense, but of sensation and emotion as well.
Define Synesthesia
An attempt to fuse different senses by describing one kind of sense impression in words normally used to describe another.
Define Tone/Mood
Thd means by which a poet reveals attitudes and feelings, in the style of language or expression of thought used to develop the subject.
