GLOSSARY OF DEVICES

Cards (79)

  • Allegory
    A story in which characters, settings, and actions stand for something beyond themselves.
  • Abstract Poem
    Verse that depends upon auditory values for meaning.
  • Metaphor
    A figure of speech comparing to unlike things without using like or as.
  • Simile
    A comparison of two unlike things using like or as.
  • Anapest
    A metrical unit with unstressed-unstressed-stressed syllables.
  • Ballad
    A type of poem that is meant to be sung and is both lyric and narrative in nature.
  • Blank Verse
    Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
  • Free Verse
    Poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme.
  • Cadence
    Rhythmic flow of a sequence of sounds or words.
  • Concrete Poetry
    A poem that visually resembles something found in the physical world.
  • Rhymed Verse

    Consists of a verse with end rhyme and regular meter.
  • Caesura
    A pause or break within a line of poetry.
  • Charm
    Something believed to bring good luck.
  • Conceit
    The trait of being vain and conceited.
  • Dirge
    A funeral hymn or lament.
  • Doggerel
    Loosely styled and irregular in measure especially for burlesque or comic effect.
  • End Rhyme
    Rhyme that occurs at the end of two or more lines of poetry.
  • Internal Rhyme
    A rhyme between words in the same line.
  • Alliteration
    The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words.
  • Onomatopoeia
    The use of words that imitate sounds.
  • Meter
    A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
  • Foot
    One stressed syllable and one or more unstressed syllables.
  • Fable
    A brief story that leads to a moral, often using animals as characters.
  • Open Couplet
    A couplet that is not gramatically complete without the next line of verse.
  • Haiku
    A Japanese form of poetry, consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables.
  • Half Rhyme
    A rhyme in which the final sounds of the words are similar, but not identical.
  • Heroic Couplet
    A couplet consisting of two rhymed lines of iambic pentamenter and written in an elevated style.
  • Iambic
    One unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.
  • Image
    A single word or phrase that appeals to the senses.
  • Inversion
    Reversal of the normal word order of a sentence.
  • Kenning
    A fiurative expression used in place of a noun
  • Trochee
    A metrical unit with stressed-stressed-unstressed syllables.
  • Spondaic
    Two stressed syllables.
  • Parallelism
    The use of corresponding grammatical or syntactical forms.
  • Poetic License
    License used by a writer or artist to heighten the effect of their work.
  • Prose Poem
    Usually a short composition having the intentions of poetry but written in prose rather than verse.
  • Refrain
    A regularly repeated line or group of lines in a poem or song.
  • Ode
    A poem in praise of an object or person.
  • Satire
    Language or writing that exposes follies or abuses by holding them up to ridicule.
  • Alliteration
    The repetition of sounds at the beginning of words in the same line or successive lines