LITERARY TERM

Imagery
Metaphor

DEFINITION
Use of adjectives (descriptive words) to create a picture in the readers mind.
A figure of speech in which a word or a phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not
literally applicable.
I had fallen through a trapdoor of depression
Simile
A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind
and is generally used to place emphasis on a description. He was as brave as a lion
Personification
The attribution of human characteristics or a personal nature to something nonhuman.
Pathetic fallacy
Using the environment and weather to create feeling and tone for the passage/story.
Oxymoron
A figure of speech by which an idea produces a seemingly self-contradictory effect
Cruel kindness
Tripling
A group of three words.
Parallelism
Similarity of structure in a series or pair of related words and/or phrases.
Live in your world, play in ours
Tone
The quality or character of a text
Hyperbole
Obvious and intentional exaggeration to emphasise a point.
Alliteration
The commencement of two or more stressed syllables of a word group with the same letter.
Apt alliterations artful aid
Plosive
Hard-sounding words. Basic plosives in English are: t, k, p, d, g and b
Cut
Fricative
A consonant produced by the forcing of breath through a constricted passage. Basic fricatives in
English are: f, d, s
Saw, say, sane
Sibilance
Using the sound of S repeatedly.
Smooth, silky skin
Assonance
The repetition of the sound of a vowel in non-rhyming stressed syllables near to each other
S, sh
Onomatopoeia
Formation of a word from the sound associated with what is named.
Crack, boom, bang
Juxtaposition
An act or instance of placing words/phrases close together or side by side for comparison or
contrast.
Jargon
Technical words or expressions used by a group/profession that may be difficult for others to
understand.
Paradox
A statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a
possible truth.
Antithesis
A contrast or opposition between two things, or a person or thing that is the direct opposite of
something else.
Compassion is the antithesis of selfishness
Syntax
The arrangement of words/phrases to create sentences in English.
Archaisms
Words and phrases not used in modern times.
Rhyming couplets When two lines in a poem rhyme together.
Half rhyme
A near or imperfect rhyme.
Free verse
Poetry that does not have rhyme or a regular meter
Enjambment
The continuation of a sentence without pause beyond the end of a line or stanza (in a poem).
Allusion
An expression that calls something to mind without explicitly mentioning it, a reference.

Ambiguity

A word or phrase that has one or more meaning or uncertainty/inexactness in meaning of

language.
Connotation
An idea or concept that a word invokes in addition to its literal meaning.
Red = anger
Denotation
The literal meaning of a word/phrase in contrast to any feelings or ideas that the word/phrase
suggests
Caesura
Any interruption, break or pause near the middle of a line in a poem.
Narrative persona Style of writing.
End-stops
A rhetorical pause at the end of each line in a poem.
Omniscient
When a story is told by an all-knowing narrator.
narrator
Narrative
How a story is told
structure
Limited narrator When a story is limited to one character/persons point of view