Quarter 2: Poetry Unit Vocabulary Flashcards
Acrostic
Poem arranged so that certain letters form a word or phrase that is often the name or title of the subject.
All the bugs move away
Now the army’s come to stay
Tirelessly marching through the forest
Soldiers going on a forage.
Alliteration
Repetition of the first consonant of successive words. Tongue twisters are one type of alliteration.
The slimy snake slithered along the sand.
Cinquain
A stanza of 5 lines with various patterns.
Figurative Language
Words chosen for a creative effect rather than literal description.
Free Verse
Poems with no particular structure of rhythm or rhyme
Haiku
A Japanese poem of 3 lines, made in a pattern of 5,7,5 syllables
Japanese haiku
Captures a moment in time
Snapshot memory
Ironic
A situation in which contradictory ideas are presented together.
The police station was broken into by thieves.
Limerick
Form of nonsense verse, usually consisting of 5 lines which uses the rhyme scheme aabba and a rhythmic pattern which is similar for the longer lines (1, 2 and 5) and for the shorter lines (3 and 4).
There once was a man from Peru;
who dreamed he was eating his shoe.
He woke with a fright in the middle of the night
to find that his dream had come true.
Metaphor
A figure of speech in which a two objects are directly compared to one another WITHOUT using ‘like’ or ‘as’.
Paint is the skin of a wall. Its wrinkles and scars mark its age.
Onomatopoeia
An attempt to represent a thing or action by a word that imitates the sound associated with it.
Clang, bang, woosh, splat -
The bell rang an end to the gnat!
Personification
It is figure of speech in which a non-living object is given living qualities.
The suspicious atmosphere of the house made it feel as if the very walls were listening in to every conversation.
Poetic Devices
Techniques used by a poet to develop the ideas, format, sound and rhythm of a poem for an effect. Figurative language is one type of poetic device.
(example: alliteration)
Rhyme
The similarity of sound between two words.
run, sun, bun and one
Shape
A form of poetry in which a poem is written in a particular shape corresponding to the topic of the poem
Simile
A figure of speech in which one object is compare to another using ‘like’ or ‘as’.
He’s as thin as a rake.
