Poetic terms

Question 1

Alliteration

Answer 1

Repeated consonant sounds in adjacent or nearby words, especially at the beginning of stressed syllables (e.g. bulldogs in battle)

Question 2

Associations

Answer 2

Associations are the feelings certain words create in us. For example, ‘light’ is associated with clarity and truth.

Question 3

Assonance

Answer 3

Repeated vowel sounds in nearby stressed syllables (e.g. black mat)

Question 4

Caesura

Answer 4

A pause in a line of poetry, especially to allow its sense to be made clear or to follow the rhythms of natural speech, often near the middle of the line.

Question 5

Couplet

Answer 5

A pair of successive lines of verse, typically rhyming and of the same length.

Question 5

Dialect

Answer 5

A variety of speech or language different from the standard language.

Question 6

Dramatic monologue

Answer 6

A poem voiced by a single speaker who is not the poet but, normally, a vividly realised character who expresses his or her personality through the strongly dramatised voice and in a specific situation (usually to a silent addressee).

Question 7

Enjambement

Answer 7

The continuation of a sentence beyond the end of a line, couplet or stanza (also known as run-on lines).

Question 8

Free verse

Answer 8

Poetry with no regular metre or rhyme pattern

Question 9

Form

Answer 9

Poetic form may include the shape of the poem on the page – how many lines it has, how long or short they are, whether or not it is divided into stanzas. Form may also include the way a poem uses patterns of sound – e.g. rhyme pattern, alliteration. The term may also be used to refer to what we can loosely call the poem’s style – the kind of language it uses, its word-choice or diction, its figurative devices, its mode of address.

Question 10

Imagery

Answer 10

Imagery refers to the kinds of word pictures an author creates to help us imagine what is being described. It includes metaphors, similes and personification.

Question 11

Metre

Answer 11

The rhythmic arrangement of syllables in a poem.

Question 11

Onomatopoeia

Answer 11

A word whose sound imitates and therefore suggests its meaning, as in ‘hiss, crackle’, ‘cuckoo’, ‘whizz’.

Question 11

Metaphor

Answer 11

Direct comparison of one thing to another without using ‘as’ or ‘like’ (e.g. the city is a jungle tonight).

Question 12

Oxymoron

Answer 12

The conjunction of two mutually contradictory words, describing something in terms of its opposite (e.g. ‘darkness visible’; ‘blinding sight’).

Question 13

Personification

Answer 13

The attribution of human qualities to objects or abstract notions.

Question 14

Refrain

Answer 14

Chorus or repeated line.

Question 15

Rhyme scheme

Answer 15

A rhyme scheme is the term we use to describe the way a writer organises rhyming words. The letter ‘a’ is used for the first rhymed sounds, ‘b’ for the second, and so on.

Question 16

Rhyme

Answer 16

Words that end with the same sound, e.g. ‘right’ and ‘fight’. End rhyme is when the sounds at the ends of lines agree with each other (e.g. Why are we so afraid of the dark? /It doesn’t bite and doesn’t bark). Internal rhyme is where words rhyme within the line (e.g. The falling of sand, that watch your hand). A half or near rhyme is when words do not fully rhyme (e.g. ‘snow’/’now’ and ‘lame’/‘come’).

Question 17

Rhythm

Answer 17

The pattern of sound in a poem, its beat.

Question 18

Simile

Answer 18

A comparison using ‘as’ or ‘like’ (e.g. as brave as a lion; she felt trapped like a bird in a case).

Question 18

Sonnet

Answer 18

A short poem with 14 lines, usually ten-syllable rhyming lines.

Question 19

Stanza

Answer 19

The grouping of lines in a poem – also known as a ‘verse.

Question 20

Speaker

Answer 20

A term used to distinguish the often fictional speaker of a poem from the person who wrote it (i.e. the poet). Equivalent to ‘narrator’ in a novel.

Question 21

Stanza break

Answer 21

The break (represented by a blank line) between two stanzas.

Question 22

Stress

Answer 22

The emphasis placed on a word, e.g. in the word ‘Monday’ the first syllable is stressed, the second unstressed.

Question 23

Syllable

Answer 23

Sounds that make up words, e.g. ‘underneath’ has three syllables:
un-der-neath.

Question 24

Symbol

Answer 24

Something that represents something else (e.g. a dove is symbol of peace).

Question 25

Tone

Answer 25

This describes the writer’s voice – whether it is serious, humorous, neutral, sarcastic and so on. The tone of a poem might change as it develops