Literary Terms

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31 words 5 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. repetition
    the act of doing or performing again
  2. dialect
    the usage or vocabulary characteristic of a group of people
  3. personification
    attributing human characteristics to abstract ideas
  4. irony
    incongruity between what might be expected and what occurs
  5. symbol
    something visible that represents something invisible
  6. motif
    a recurrent element in a literary or artistic work
  7. foreshadowing
    the act of providing vague advance indications
  8. moral
    concerned with principles of right and wrong
  9. allusion
    passing reference or indirect mention
  10. fable
    a short moral story
  11. spiritual
    lacking material body or form or substance
  12. folk tale
    a tale circulated by word of mouth among the common folk
  13. legend
    a story about mythical or supernatural beings or events
  14. parable
    a short moral story
  15. fairy tale
    a children's story involving fantastical beings or elements
  16. myth
    a traditional story serving to explain a world view
  17. symbol
    something visible that represents something invisible
  18. metaphor
    a figure of speech that suggests a non-literal similarity
  19. onomatopoeia
    using words that imitate the sound they denote
  20. rhyme
    correspondence in the final sounds of two or more lines
  21. simile
    a figure of speech expressing a resemblance between things
  22. alliteration
    use of the same consonant at the beginning of each word
  23. assonance
    the repetition of similar vowels in successive words
  24. consonance
    a harmonious state of things and of their properties
  25. paradox
    a statement that contradicts itself
  26. apostrophe
    a mark used to indicate the omission of one or more letters
  27. understatement
    something said in a restrained way for ironic contrast
  28. hyperbole
    extravagant exaggeration
  29. synecdoche
    using part of something to refer to the whole thing
  30. metonymy
    substituting the name of a feature for the name of the thing
  31. allegory
    a short moral story
Created on Mon Oct 03 14:34:40 EDT 2011 (updated Wed Oct 05 09:08:25 EDT 2011)

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