Poetic Terms Flashcards
Alliteration
Practice of beginning several consecutive or neighboring words with the same sound.
Allusion
A reference to a mythological, literacy, or historical person, place, or thing.
Antithesis
A person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else.
Apostrophe
An exclamatory passage in a speech or poem addressed to a person (typically someone who is dead or absent) or thing (typically one that is personified).
Assonance
The repetition of vowel sounds in a series of words.
Consonance
The repitition of a constant sound within a series of words to produce a harmonious effect.
Enjambment
The continuation of a sentence or clause over a line-break. Enjambment is one way of creating audible interest.
Hyberbole
A deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration. It may be used for serious or comic effect.
Imagery
Visual picture created in words.
Metaphor
A comparison without the use of like or as. The poet states that one thing is another. It is usually a comparison between something that is concrete and something that is abstract.
Meter
Pattern of recurring rhythm
Onomatopoeia
The use of words in which the sounds seem to resemble the sounds they describe.
Personification
A kind of metaphor that gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics.
Rhythm
A musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Rhyme
The repetition of the end-sounds of words.
Rhyme Scheme
The repetition of the end-sounds of words.
SImiilie
A comparison of two different things or ideas through the use of the words ‘like’ or ‘as’. It is a definitely stated comparison in which the poet says one thing is like another.
Synechdoche
A term for a part of something refers to the whole of something, or vice-versa
Understatement
The presentation of something as being smaller, worse, or less important than it actually is.
