Mr. Svab
English
POETRY VOCABULARY
Highlighted terms are essential.
1. ALEXANDRINE: A line of poetry that has 12 syllables. The name probably comes from a medieval romance about Alexander the Great that was written in 12-syllable lines.
2. ALLITERATION: The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words.
3. ANTONYM: Words that are opposite in meaning
4. APOSTROPHE: Words that are spoken to a person who is absent or imaginary, or to an object or abstract idea. The poem “God's World” by Edna St. Vincent Millay begins with an apostrophe: “O World, I cannot hold thee close enough!/Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!/Thy mists that roll and rise!”
5. ASSONANCE: The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or line of poetry. Example: “The fat apparition of my bad cat spat at me.” Note the repetition of the short /a/ sound.
6. BALLAD: A poem that tells a story similar to a folk tale or legend and often has a repeated refrain. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is an example of a ballad.
7. BLANK VERSE: A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
8. CAESURA: A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line. There is a caesura right after the question mark in the first line of this sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
9. CONNOTATION: The personal or emotional associations called up by a word that go beyond its dictionary meaning.
10. CONSONANCE: the correspondence of consonants, esp. those at the end of a syllable or word, in a passage of prose or verse. Example: “The assassin’s spaghetti was awesome.” Note the repeated /s/ sounds within the sentence.
11. COUPLET: In a poem, a pair of lines that are the same length and usually rhyme and form a complete thought. Shakespearean sonnets usually end in a couplet.
12. DENOTATION: The dictionary meaning of a word.
13. ELEGY: A poem that laments the death of a person, or one that is simply sad and thoughtful. Examples of this type of poem are Thomas Gray's “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” and Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.”
14. ENJAMBMENT: The continuation of a complete idea (a sentence or clause) from one line or couplet of a poem to the next line or couplet without a pause. An example of enjambment can be found in the first line of Joyce Kilmer's poem Trees: “I think that I shall never see/A poem as lovely as a tree.” Enjambment comes from the French word for “to straddle.” Basically, a sentence continues on the next line.
15. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: A form of language use in which writers and speakers mean something other than the literal meaning of their words. (E.g. hyperbole, metaphor, and simile)
16. FORM: the arrangement, manner or method used to convey the content, such as free verse, couplet, limerick, haiku, sonnet, etc.
17. FOOT: a set of syllables where one is stressed/accented and the other(s) is/are unstressed/unaccented.
18. FREE VERSE: Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme.
19. HAIKU: A Japanese poem usually composed of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Haikus often reflect on some aspect of nature.
20. HOMONYM: Two or more distinct words with the same pronunciation and spelling but with different meanings. Example: class
a. I was late to class today.
b. That guy has no class.
21. HOMOPHONE: two or more words with the same pronunciation but with different meanings and spellings. Example: meat and meet; their, they’re, and there, etc.
22. HYPERBOLE: an exaggeration of the truth.
23. IAMB: a foot of two syllables, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in
/ / / / <--- stress marks
Come live / with me / and be / my love.
24. IMAGE: A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea.
25. IMAGERY: Figurative language used to create particular mental images.
26. LYRIC: A poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. A lyric poem may resemble a song in form or style.
27. METAPHOR: an association of two completely different objects as being the same thing
28. METER: The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems.
29. METONYMY: A figure of speech in which one word is substituted for another with which it is closely associated. For example, in the expression “The pen is mightier than the sword,” the word pen is used for “the written word,” and sword is used for “military power.” Another example: in the phrase “The White House declared today—,” the actual White House is not doing the declaring. “The White House” is being used to represent the president and his administration.
30. ONOMATOPOEIA: A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Examples: buzz, click, hiss.
31. PENTAMETER: A line of verse containing five (penta) syllabic feet (2 syllables=1 foot; 5 feet=10 syllables)
32. PERSONIFICATION: A figure of speech in which things or abstract ideas are given human attributes: “dead leaves dance in the wind,” “blind justice.”
33. RHYME: The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words.
34. RHYME SCHEME: The pattern of rhyme in a stanza: abab, cdcd, etc.
35. RHYTHM: The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse.
36. SETTING: The time and place of a literary work that establishes its context.
37. SIMILE: A figure of speech invoking a comparison between unlike things using "like," "as," or "as though."
38. SONNET: A lyric poem that is 14 lines long. Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnets are divided into two quatrains and a six-line “sestet,” with the rhyme scheme abba abba cdecde (or cdcdcd). English (or Shakespearean) sonnets are composed of three quatrains and a final couplet, with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg. English sonnets are written generally in iambic pentameter.
39. SPEAKER: The narrator of a poem. Not to be confused with the poet, or author.
40. STANZA: Two or more lines of poetry that together form one of the divisions of a poem. The stanzas of a poem are usually of the same length and follow the same pattern of meter and rhyme.
41. STRUCTURE: The design or form of a literary work.
42. SYMBOL: An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself.
43. SYNONYM: One of two or more words that have the same or nearly the same meanings.
44. TONE: The implied attitude of a writer (or speaker) toward the subject and characters of a work. (See Tone & Mood Vocabulary)
45. TROPE: A figure of speech, such as metaphor or metonymy, in which words are not used in their literal (or actual) sense but in a figurative (or imaginative) sense. Many of the terms above are tropes.