Rhyme’s Reason: Reading: Literature - Literary Devices & Figures of Speech - High School

If you want to understand the tools and techniques that great writers use, learn these literary devices and figures of speech. Review this vocabulary list and you'll be a master of metaphor, an expert on euphemism, and a pro at puns.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. allegory
    a style in which characters and events are symbolic
  2. alliteration
    use of the same consonant at the beginning of each word
  3. allusion
    passing reference or indirect mention
  4. ambiguity
    unclearness by virtue of having more than one meaning
  5. anachronism
    locating something at a time when it couldn't have existed
  6. analogy
    drawing a comparison in order to show a similarity
  7. anaphora
    repetition of a word or phrase to begin successive clauses
  8. anticlimax
    a change from a serious subject to a disappointing one
  9. antiphrasis
    the use of a word in a sense opposite to its normal sense
  10. antithesis
    the juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas for balance
  11. aphorism
    a short pithy instructive saying
  12. apostrophe
    an address to an absent or imaginary person
  13. apposition
    a relation between a word and a noun phrase that follows
  14. archaism
    the use of an outdated expression
  15. assonance
    the repetition of similar vowels in successive words
  16. asyndeton
    omission of conjunctions where they would normally be used
  17. bathos
    a change from a serious subject to a disappointing one
  18. caricature
    a representation of a person exaggerated for comic effect
  19. catachresis
    strained or paradoxical use of words either in error (as `blatant' to mean `flagrant') or deliberately (as in a mixed metaphor: `blind mouths')
  20. catharsis
    purging of emotional tensions
  21. chiasmus
    inversion in the second of two parallel phrases
  22. circumlocution
    an indirect way of expressing something
  23. cliche
    a trite or obvious remark
  24. consonance
    the repetition of sounds especially at the ends of words
  25. contradiction
    opposition between two conflicting forces or ideas
  26. deus ex machina
    an agent who appears unexpectedly to solve a difficulty
  27. double entendre
    a word or phrase with two meanings, one of which is indecent
  28. elision
    omission of a sound between two words
  29. ellipsis
    a mark indicating that words have been omitted
  30. encomium
    a formal expression of praise
  31. epigraph
    a quotation at the beginning of some piece of writing
  32. euphemism
    an inoffensive expression substituted for an offensive one
  33. flashback
    a transition in a story to an earlier event or scene
  34. foreshadowing
    the act of providing vague advance indications
  35. hyperbole
    extravagant exaggeration
  36. inversion
    the reversal of the normal order of words
  37. irony
    incongruity between what is expected and what occurs
  38. juxtaposition
    the act of positioning close together
  39. litotes
    understatement for rhetorical effect
  40. metaphor
    a figure of speech that suggests a non-literal similarity
  41. metonymy
    substituting the name of a feature for the name of the thing
  42. mimesis
    imitative or realistic representation in art and literature
  43. neologism
    a newly invented word or phrase
  44. non sequitur
    a conclusion that does not follow from the premises
  45. onomatopoeia
    using words that imitate the sound they denote
  46. oxymoron
    conjoined contradictory terms
  47. paradox
    a statement that contradicts itself
  48. parody
    a composition that imitates or misrepresents a style
  49. pathetic fallacy
    the attribution of human feelings to inanimate objects
  50. periphrasis
    an act of expressing things in an indirect or roundabout way
  51. personification
    representing an abstract quality or idea as a human
  52. pleonasm
    using more words than necessary
  53. polysyndeton
    using several conjunctions in close succession, especially where some might be omitted (as in `he ran and jumped and laughed for joy')
  54. pun
    a humorous play on words
  55. repetition
    the continued use of the same word or word pattern
  56. sarcasm
    witty language used to convey insults or scorn
  57. satire
    witty language used to convey insults or scorn
  58. simile
    a figure of speech expressing a resemblance between things
  59. symbolism
    the practice of investing things with arbitrary meaning
  60. synecdoche
    using part of something to refer to the whole thing
  61. trope
    language used in a nonliteral sense
  62. understatement
    something said in a restrained way for ironic contrast
  63. verisimilitude
    the appearance of truth; the quality of seeming to be true
  64. zeugma
    rhetorical use of a word to govern two or more words
Created on Thu Jan 12 14:02:44 EST 2017 (updated Wed Mar 29 15:30:58 EDT 2017)

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